TWENTIETH EDITION 


_DIVIN B LIFE 
FOR THE 
BODY 


| ae REV. KENNETH MACKENZIE 


Special Lecturer at the Missionary Training Institute, 
ae . Nyack, N. Y. 


CONTENTS 


The Divine Leading 
The Divine Provision 
~The Divine Command 
The Divine Motive 
_ The Divine Method 
_ The Divine Manifestation 





_ Divine Healing is perhaps the most talked-of sub- 

Sis ject in Christian circles today. Read this powerful 
if pronouncement on the subject of God’s provision for 

nee believer’ s sessed Then pass it on to others. 


th “The Christian Alliance "Publishing Company 


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tified life a development or is it a definite experience 
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DIVINE. LIFE: 


FOR 


THE BODY 





ay 


BY 


Rey. Kenneth Meeks 





CHRISTIAN ALLIANCE PUBLISHING Co. 
260 wEst 44TH STREET 
NEW YORK, N. Y. 





COPYRIGHT, 1926, 
CHRISTIAN ALLIANCE PUBLISHING COMPANY 


Printed in the United States of America 


FOREWORD 


HE first edition of this contribution to 

the healing problem was issued in 1900. 

The over a quarter of a century of its 
continuous service in this territory of ad- 
vance towards the attainment of the full 
will of God in the rounded whole of His 
provision for us, has been a most gratify- 
ing evidence of its acceptance. Many and 
varied have been the commendations which 
have reached the author through speech 
and pen. That it should still be in de- 
mand, and so widely, is an unspeakable 
comfort. 

In every religious movement, twenty-five 
years will witness a possible shifting of 
positions, a modification of ideals and a 
tempering of the spirit of presentment. ! 
The healing movement has not escaped this 
transition. 

In the beginning, the fervor of a new- 
found faith led to extreme attitudes. That 
nothing could be impossible to this faith 
was appropriated as the slogan of a ven- 
ture into realms of achievement that could 

A 


2 FOREWORD. 


tolerate no compromise. But God began to 
teach us that He has His plan and place in 
the sphere of conquest. 

There were lessons to be acquired; and 
we found that not what He had to give, but 
what He should become to the believer was 
to be the superlative test. It was not heal- 
ing we should seek, but Himself. Trage- 
dies were enacted ere that stage of the dis- 
cipline was reached. There were those who 
‘‘went back and walked no more with 
Him’’ in this field of fellowship. Others 
became opponents of what they had at first 
eagerly championed. A number left the 
problem, unsolved and sank into utter 
supineness, forsaking the entire endeavor 
as not worth the winning. 

As these features of the movement began 
to unfold, the author felt the soulful need 
of presenting divine healing in a manner 
consistent with the comprehension of the 
Scriptures in their entirety. Perhaps the 
former generation was too 'prone to seize 
the teachings of isolated texts unbalanced 
by the sidelights afforded by others. To 
meet this situation, Divine Lirg For THE 
Bopy was conceived and born. As he re- 
views the days of its preparation, a deep 


FOREWORD. 3 


sense of humbling comes over him in the 
reverent realization that the Lord was lead- 
ing and holding. For, many things, then 
first defined, have since become. funda- 
mental to those who espouse this great 
truth. 

In the present age, when on all sides the 
counterfeit is rivalling the genuine, it be- 
comes God’s children everywhere to seek 
His mind. Can we ignore the question 
without peril to our best spiritual culture? 
Do not the conditions which have de- 
veloped since this volume first saw the light 
challenge us to stand with our blessed Lord 
for the fullest He can do for us and through 
us? The weight of this demand upon our 
faith lies in the compelling thought that 
we are not entering into the measure of 
our inheritance of life if we refuse to in- 
clude our physical man in the compre-, 
hension of our Lord’s will for us. And it 
is not for our sakes alone that we urge the 
response to the call: He, too, will lose much 
if we deny Him the place in our lives 
which He longs to fill. As He is the Head » 
of the Body, the Church, and we are the 
members, the life of the Head is His to 
bestow and ours to receive. 


4 FOREWORD. 


May this little servant of the Lord, so 
' generously accorded the approval of God’s 
people in the past, merit His benediction in 
the days that are and those which are to 
come. 
KENNETH MACKENZIE. 
April, 1926. 


CONTENTS 


I. THE DIVINE LEADING 


An Advance in the Pursuit of Spiritual 
Ideals. The Doctrine of the Holy Spir- 
it. Surrender to Him marked by As- 
surance, Temporal Supply, the Hope of 
the Coming of the Lord Jesus, and the 
Truth of Divine Healing ............ 9% 


II. THE DIVINE PROVISION 
He is the Same. The Possibilities of Faith 15 


Ill. THE DIVINE PROVISION (Continued) 


Strength Promised. A New Vision of the 
Will of God @eeeeveaes eee ov eevee eevee eee2080 26 


IV. THE DIVINH PROVISION (Concluded) 


Healing in the Atonement. Life in the 
Glorified Body of the Lord Jesus for 
the Physical Needs of the Believer ... 39 


Vv. THE DIVINE COMMAND 


The Lord Himself the Healer. Satanic 
Agency in the Operation of Disease, 
Obedience, God’s Way of Safety .... G1 


5 


6 CONTENTS. 


VI. THE DIVINE MOTIVE 


God’s Use of Sickness. Not intended to be 
Permanent. We are His Workman- 
ship. The Sovereignty of the Holy 
Spirit. The Body for the Lord and 
the Lord for the Body. The Blesser 
More than the Blessing. Divine Life 
not Alone for the Sick. The Divine 
Motive Apprehended, the Saints Add 
Length of Days to a Triumphant Spir- 
itual Ldfe  .cicc cc cc peewee coaccsiccsesse 


VII. THE DIVINE METHOD. 


God is Superior to Remedies. Christian 
Science the Counterfeit of Divine Heal- 
ing. Satan Recognised. The Word the 
Sword of the Spirit. The Life of Jesus 


74 


in the Word. Special Consecration ... 102 


VIII. THE DIVINE METHOD (Concluded) 


Faith. It is the Faith of God. Appropria- 
tion. Strength out of Weakness. The 
Prayer Life. Make Time for Prayer. 


Sincerity in Waiting upen Ged. Stifl- 
ness. Dying with Jesus. The Praise Life 


IX. THE DIVINE MANIFESTATION 


Healing always Present in the Church. 
Difference between Instantaneous and 
Progressive Healings. The Lord’s 
Healing never Independent of Him- 


124 


CONTENTS. 


is 


gelf. Life by the Moment. Thorough- 
ness and ofttimes Suddenness of Di- 
vine Healings. The Glory Life. Spirit- 
wal Participation in the Healing Pro- 
cesses. Freedom from all Bondage. 
Consciousness of the Divine Indwel- 
ling. The Impartation of Divine Life 
to the Body of the Believer the Spirit’s 
Preparation for the Translation of the 
Baints 2... cccccccce covsccssessvers 159 





Chapter L 


THE DIVINE LEADING 


Ap advance in the pursuit of spiritual ideals. 
The doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Surrender 
to Him marked by assurance, temporal 
supply, the hope of the coming of 
the Lerd Jesus, and the truth of 
Divine Healing. 


N the last quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
i tury, the Church has witnessed a striking 
advance in the pursuit of spiritual ideals. 
An awakening to fuller possibilities of the 
Divine life has been felt in all sections. 
This movement toward God has been 
marked by the teaching of the doctrine of 
the Holy Ghost. Perhaps few of us realize 
how little the Spirit of God had been dwelt 
upon by the ministry. A prominent writer 
in one of the religious magazines as late as 
1890, confessed that an experience of 
eighteen years had brought to him the 
solemn conclusion that in the sermons of 


10 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BOD. 


that period there had been a signal absence 
of any allusion to “The Comforter, which 
is the Holy Ghost.” His observations had 
extended not alone to the constant hearing 
of discourses by prominent evangelical min- 
isters; but as well, to the study of Prayer 
Meeting Topics, Scripture Lessons and Year 
Books. One lengthy article on “Intellect in 
the Modern Pulpit” has not a single refer- 
ence to the Holy Spirit. A pamphlet of 
eighteen pages on “The Practical Training 
Needed for the Ministry of Today,” by a 
professor in one of the theological semi- 
naries, and of unquestioned orthodoxy, 
makes no mention of the Holy Spirit in the 
ministry. He also quotes the statement of 
Dr. Daniel Steele that “In forty years not 
one article on this topic is found among the 
one thousand and two hundred in the Bib- 
liotheca Sacra, or in the Methodist 
Quarterly Review.” 

This introduction to our subject is offered 
that we may be impressed with the truth- 
fulness of the first statement made. A re- 
cent announcement of one of the leading 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. be | 


publishing houses gives the titles of twenty- 
one books on the Holy Spirit, all of which 
have been written within the past twenty 
five years. The productions of other house. 
would indicate that the demand for teach. 
ing on this precious theme has become im- 
perative. We cannot view this onward step 
without a reverent conviction that Ged has 
designed some great end to follow. Certain- 
ly, the impetus given to the belief in the 
operative personality of the Holy Spirit can- 
not easily die out. On the contrary, the 
feeling must possess us all that He will 
prove this work to be of Himself. 

Many of those who have learned the bles- 
sedness of surrender to the Spirit, have been 
drawn to depths of experience far beyond 
their most sanguine expectations. It has 
not been with them that they have pre- 
sumptuously cultivated this state of living. 
On the contrary, as they have advanced, 
they have met testings, which, but for the 
consciousness of the Lords leading, might 
have tempted them to a return to their eld 
formal ways. Like the saints of Pentecost, 


42 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


they had no alternative but to acknowletys 
the supremacy of the Spirit’s ownership of 
them, or deny the presence in their lives of 
the heavenly Guide. 

They began to appropriate Him for 
present exigencies. How sweetly did He 
yield Himself to them in their daily needs. 
The dread possibilities of the eternal judg- 
ment could not as in the past disturb their 
peace. The assurance of salvation was no 
longer a vague “hope so” as in former days. 
They found engraved upon their conscious- 
ness, even as it is in the Word, “We know 
that we have passed from death to life.” 
Temporal things too, became more and more 
the property of faith, and their adjustment 
the province of the daily Care-Taker. The 
joy of His indwelling intensified. It came 
to them that their portion is to sit loosely to 
the things of time, and behold “things 
which are not seen” which “are eternal,” 
emphasized and enlarged. 

As these visions of privilege grew clearer, 
fresh light from the Word answered to the 
light within. And the blessed hope of the 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 13 


appearing of the Lord Jesus loomed up in 
the perspective, adding yet another claim to 
the Spirit’s sovereignty. Stripped of its 
fanciful drapery, robbed of the terrors in 
which a false interpretation had enshrouded 
it, imminently expected, yet bound by no 
dogmatic point of time, this “pole star” of 
the Church became in a measure so real, 
so vital, as to dominate the life, chasten the 
thoughts, satisfy the heart. “The Lord is 
at hand” was reinvested with apostolic fer- 
vor and affection. 

But these accompaniments of this later 
day manifestation of the personality and in- 
dwelling of the Holy Spirit, led to still deep- 
er searchings of soul. When our Lord re- 
ceives from His children full surrender to 
His purposes, they may not be surprised by 
any new unfolding of His way. The “much 
land that remained yet to be possessed” 
opened to their perspective. The willing- 
ness to “believe all things” indicated te 
them that “all things are possible with God.” 
Why should the wonderful promises al- 
ready appropriated exhaust the power of the 


14 PIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


Omnipotent One? Why know His exceed- 
ing abundance of grace in spiritual things, 
take Him for the daily needs in temporal 
matters, weave the hope of His coming into 
the pattern of life’s fabric, and end there? 
Ah, the experience of what He had done and 
was doing led them to accept the Book 
from cover to cover. Here they found “all 
the counsel of God,” and they ventured out 
upon the promises, not because they would 
presume upon His goodness, but they had 
taken Him for their Guide and they were 
led to make Him their all sufficiency for 
body as well as spirit. 

This movement which is a historical fact 
has been known as the Faith Cure. But it 
has outgrown its early designation, and 
those who live in the light and blessing of 
the precious truth of healing have come to 
simply call it Divine Healing, or Divine life 
for the body. 


Chapter fi. 


THE DIVINE PROVISION 
He is the same. The possibilities of faith. 


HE company of redeemed ones who have 
taken the onward step, have found 
beneath their feet at each turn 

of their experience, the impregnable 
rock of the Word. They have not phi- 
losophised concerning the new, sweet 
life of committal to the Spirit’s work- 
ing. The “Thus saith the Lord” of endur- 
ing promise has been the basis of expect- 
ancy. “The word of the Lord endureth for- 
ever. And this is the word which by the 
gospel is preached unto you” (I. Peter i. 25). 
They have discovered a fresh meaning to the 
familiar text, “The words that I speak unto 
you, they are spirit and they are life” (John 
vi. 63). And the sweep of their vision em- 
braced the long ago uttered test of J ehovah, 
“Man shall not live by bread only, but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
of God” (Deut. viii. 3; Matt. iv. 4). They 


16 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BOPY. 


see now that life, here defined, means the 
existence and sustenance of the spiritual na- 
ture, the existence anl sustenance of the soul, 
and the existence and sustenance of the body. 
The entire man is comprehended. How are 
we to exist and be sustained? Not by bread 
only, which is the figure of the nourishment 
which nature has provided, but by His 
words. 

With the Book in their hands they now 
seek to know, by following on to know the 
Lord. Let us briefly investigate some of the 
characteristics of this Divine provision. 
We may speak first of the general ground 
of faith in our Lord’s promised care of our 
bodies. 

He is the same. His love and power are 
yet strong in behalf of those who put their 
trust in Him. The hands that touched the 
sick in Judea, Samaria and Galilee are yet 
not folded in rest. They are still out- 
stretched to heal all that have need of heal- 
ing. This is not alone a spiritual con- 
sciousness, but all the teaching of the Word 
along this line, challenges its acceptance in 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 17 


the whole realm of our needs. He who 
would make fine discriminations here must 
invent theories which appeal to reason. 
They will not be acknowledged by the spirit- 
ual apprehensions. When once the Holy 
Ghost has become possessed of the believer, 
He will not suffer the child of God to find 
wisdom in the critical analysis which sat- 
isfies the natural man. Saints who have 
iearned to sing 
“ord Jesus, make Thyself to me 

A living, bright, reality! 

More present to faith’s vision keen, 

Than any outward object seen, 

More dear, more intimately nigh, 

Than e’en the sweetest earthly tie.” 
are too far on in the way to submit the deep 
yearnings which are answered by His un- 
changing personality and love, to any pro- 
cesses of human logic. Nay, but they claim 
that what He did when here among men, He 
can do now. Why should the heart that was 
melted over the people, as sheep without a 
shepherd, be less sympathetic in these days 
of suffering? Surely, He who wept at the 
grave of Lazarus has not ceased to feel for 


18 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


the woes of His own. And shall He dwell 
in the heavenly places, both as our Great 
High Priest and the Heir expectant on His 
Father’s throne, with no wish to reach down 
and rescue His brethren, who are in the 
bondage of physical weakness and pain? 
Did he not say “All power is given to me in 
heaven and earth’? Is He not declared to 
be the Son of God with power through His 
resurrection ? (Matt. xxvilil. 18; Remans i. 
4). Because men have groaned and 
endured, fought disease and fell in the con- 
flict with no sense of the relation of Jesus 
Christ to their bodily needs, must the im- 
pelling force of the Spirit’s indwelling be 
bound by traditional limits? Nay. Exult- 
ant confidence cries out for all that Jesus 
can be in every testing which presses into 
the life. It would undo all the past of the 
Spirit’s blessed fruition to circumscribe now 
the boundlessness of the compassion and 
might of the risen and glorified Lord. 


“Yesterday, today, forever, 
Jesus is the same. 
All may change, but Jesus never! 
Glory to His name.» 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 18 
The possibilities of faith lie also in the 
Divine provision. Our Lord’s earthly life 
was a challenge to the faith of men. He 
praised the centurion in unmeasured words, 
for Gentile as he was, he put to shame those 
in Israel from whom much might have been 
expected. Another instance of triumphant 
faith, the Syrophenecian woman’s persist- 
ent demand for the healing of her daughter, 
received His award of honor. “OQ Woman, 
great is thy faith.” She too was a Gentile. 
Equally pronounced was His rebuke of 


a 


those who disappointed the Divine expecta- 
tion. To the care-worn hearers who listened 
to His words in the Sermon on the Mount, 
He protests, “O ye of little faith.’ When 
Peter the zealous disciple, after walking on 
the water loses his triumphant balance and 
sinks, the Master rebukes him in answer to 
his ery for succor, as He lifts him to His 
side, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst 
thou doubt?” When the disciples, terrified 
because of the storm, through which He 
elept in the hinder part of the vessel with 
the composure of childhood, awakened 


20 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


Him, and He subdued the winds and the 
waves, His remonstrance must have cut 
them to the heart. “Why are ye so fearful? 
How is it that ye have no faith?” And when 
Thomas, whose weak faith claims a prop to 
lean on, beholds His resurrected Master and 
cries in exultant worship, “My Lord and my 
God,” there fall from the lips of Jesus 
words for all the days to come, “Because 
thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; bles- 
sed are they that have not seen and have 
believed.” 

And this attitude of longing for faith was 
borne out in His teachings. Opening to 
men the marvellous bounty and good will 
of the Father, He said, 


Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye 
shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto 
you: 

For every one that asketh receiveth; and he 
that seeketh findeth; and to him that knock- 
eth it shall be opened. 

Or what man is there of you, whom if his 
son ask bread, will he give him a stone? 

Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a 
serpent? 

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 21 


gifts unto your children, how much more 
shall vour Father which is in heaven give good 
things to them that ask him? (Matt. vii. 7-11). 

Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a 
grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this 
mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and 
it shall remove: and nothing shall be impos- 
sible unto you (Matt. xvii: 20). 

If two of you shall agree on earth as touch- 
Ing any thing that they shall ask, it shall be 
done for them of my Father which is in heaven 
(Matt. xviii. 19). 

And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in 
prayer, believing, ye shall receive (Matt. xxi. 
22). 

If thou canst believe, all things are possible 
to him that believeth (Mark ix. 23). 

What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, 
believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have 
them (Mark xi. 24). 

Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that 
will I do, that the Father may be glorified in 
the Son. 

If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will 
do it (John xiv. 13, 14). 

If ye abide in me, and my words abide in 
you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall 
be done unto you (John xv. 7). 

And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. 
Verily, verity, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye 
shall ask the Father in my name, he will give 
it you. 

Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name; 
ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may 
be full (John xvi. 23, 24). 


22 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY 


The apostles also emphasized the possibil- 
ities of faith. St. Paul enjoins upon the Cor- 
inthians that an element of the love that 
characterizes the ideal Christian life “be- 
lieveth all things.” He describes Abraham 
as looking unto the promise of God, he 
wavered not through unbelief, but waxed 
strong through faith, giving glory to God, 
and being fully assured that, “what he had 
promised, he was able also to perform” 
(Romans iv. 20, 21, R. V.). Who may limit 
his exultant “all things are yours” and “he 
that spared not his own Son, but delivered 
him up for us all, how shall he not with 
him also freely give us all things?” The 
shield of faith is above all the armor of the 
saint in conflict, by which all the fiery darts 
of the devil are to be quenched. And when 
he comes to the border land, and sees before 
him the crown of martyrdom, he can say 
that he has fought the good fight. Shall we 
insist that spiritual conflicts only are in- 
dicated by this pean of victory? 

The glorious “roll of honor” of Old Tes- 
tament worthies (Hebrews xi.), displays the 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 23 


triumphs of faith in an age not yet under 
the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. St. 
James throws down the gauntlet to believ- 
evs, when he declares that to him that asks 
in faith, nothing wavering, God gives lib- 
erally. In view of the fact that in this 
epistle he states that the prayer of faith 
shall save the sick, nothing is lacking to 
complete the assurance that “the effectual 
fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth 
much.” The faith of which St. Peter speaks 
as being tried by a testing “more precious 
than of gold that perisheth,” which is to 
‘be found unto praise and honor and glory 
at the appearing of Jesus Christ” cannot be 
less than a faith which embraces whatever 
makes necessary the Divine presence and 
power. Hear also St. John, “Tf we know 
that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know 
that we have the petitions that we have 
desired of him.” 

And this New Testament witness to the 
possibilities of faith is but a bright illumin- 
ing of what the children of God have beheld 
for ages. Does not David encompass the 


24 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


limitless field of faith in his “no good thing 
will he withhold from them that walk up- 
rightly?” and “they that seek the Lord shall 
not want any good thing?” and again, “De- 
light thy self in the Lord and he shall give 
thee the desires of thy heart?” How glor- 
iously did they in those days ride upon the 
high places of the earth, when there rang 
in their ears the boundless assurance that 
the might of Omnipotence could not fail, 
while patient faith waited on Him! “Is there 
anything too hard for me?” “Blessed is the 
man that trusteth in the Lord.” “They 
shall not be ashamed that wait for me.” 
How many are the longings of our 
God to bless to the uttermost! It was 
the grasp of this portraiture of the Most 
High, that enabled the worthy ones 
“through faith to subdue kingdoms, work 
righteousness, obtain promises, stop the 
mouths of lions, quench the violence of fire, 
escape the edge of the sword, out of weak- 
ness to be made strong, wax valiant in fight, 
turn to flight the armies of the aliens.” 
Surely when these lustrous examples have 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 25 


shed their bright beams upon our dark 
paths, we may embrace in the scope of their 
conquest, every want that makes the help of 
God necessary, and sing with new fervor, 
“Thou art coming to a King; 
Large petitions with thee bring; 


For His grace and power are such, 
None can ever ask too much.” 





Chapter IIL 


THE DIVINE PROVISION (Continued) 
Strength promised. A new vision of the will 
of God. 

S we trace the provision of our bounti- 
A ful Lord for the needs of His faithful 
ones, we are impressed that His con- 
stant references to strength and long life are 
to physical bestowments as well as to spirit- 
ual. 

The first commandment with promise is 
“that thy days may be long upon the land, 
which the Lord thy God giveth thee” (Ex. 
xx. 12). This is quoted by the Apostle and 
emphasised (Eph. vi. 2). 

The Lord declares that He is the Life and 
length of days of those who love Him, 
obey His voice and cleave unto Him (Deut. 
xxx. 20). And the premium which He 
sets upon His word is defined in (Deut. 
xxxil. 46, 47). “Set your hearts unto all the 
words which I testify among you this day; 
which ye shall command your children to ob- 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 27 


serve to do, all the words of this law. For 
it is not a vain thing for you; because it is 
your life; and through this thing ye shall 
prolong your days.” We are familiar with 
the promise (Deut. xxxiii. 25) “As thy days 
so shall thy strength be,” and we know that 
when the statement is made that Moses at 
his death, “his eye was not dim, nor his 
natural force abated,” it is a testimony that 
Moses physical life was touched by the life 
of God. 

Joshua receiving his call to lead the chil- 
dren of Israel, is assured that he is to be 
strong. The benediction which as a mantle 
covered his predecessors, is to be his. And 
David summons at the last grateful testimony 
to his Lord’s keeping in the words, “Thou 
hast girded me with strength.” This dying 
confession is the echo of such triumphant 
confidence as is expressed in Ps. xviii. 1, 2, “I 
will love Thee, O Lord, my Strength. The 
Lord is my Rock and my Fortress, and my 
Deliverer; my God, my Strength, in whom 
I will trust.” Observe too, “The Lord will 
give strength unto His people” (Psalm xxix. 


28 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


11). “Thy God hath commanded thy 
strength; strengthen O God, that which Thou 
hast wrought for us.” “The God of Israel is 
He that giveth strength and power to His 
people” (Psalm lxviil. 28, 35). “My flesh 
and my heart faileth, but God is the strength 
of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 
Ixxiii. 26). “Blessed is the man whose 
strength is in Thee” (Psalm lxxxiv. 5). How 
beautifully does He crown the life of faith in 
his conclusion of Psalm xci. “I will deliver 
him and honor him. With long life will 
I satisfy him and show him My salvation.” 
The book of Proverbs is singularly qual- 
ified with promises of life and physical 
health. “Length of days and long life. . 
shall they add unto thee.” “Fear the Lord 
and depart from evil; it shall be health... 
and marrow to thy bones.” “Take fast hold 
of instruction; let her not go; keep her, for 
she is thy life.” “The fear of the Lord pro- 
longeth days.” “Righteousness tendeth to 
life.” “A sound heart is life to the flesh” 
(Proverbs iii. 2, 8; iv. 18; xi. 29; xiv. 30). 
Like unto David’s exultant cry is that of 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 29 


the prophet, “Behold, God is my salvation; 
I will trust and not be afraid; for the Lord 
Jehovah is my strength and my song; He al- 
80 is become my salvation” (Isaiah xii. 3). 
And, “Trust ye in the Lord forever; for in 
the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.” 
“He giveth power to the faint; and to him 
that hath no might, he increaseth strength. 
Even the youths shall faint and be weary, 
and the young men shall utterly fall; but 
they that wait upon the Lord shall reney 
(change) their strength” (Isaiah xxvi. 4; xl. 
29-31). 

Fitting indeed is the picture of Daniel, 
exhausted in the apprehending of the won- 
derful vision, approached by the angel with 
the conferment of physical strength for 
God’s weary servant. “O man, greatly be- 
loved, fear not; peace be unto thee, be strong, 
yea, be strong.” Hear Daniel’s witness, 
“And when he had spoken unto me, I was 
strengthened and said, Let my Lord speak; 
for Thou hast strengthened me.” And 
there is a wonderful comprehension in Ne- 
hemiah’s exhortation to the people that glad 


80 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


day in Jerusalem, when they were assured, 
“The joy of the Lord is your strength” 
(Neh. viii. 10). 

Referring to some New Testament texts, 
which we shall regard in other connections 
during our study, we have ground to believe 
that “power over all the power of the ene- 
my” (Luke x. 19), “I am come that they 
may have life, and have it abundantly” 
(John x. 10), “All power is given to me in 
heaven and on earth” (Matt. xxviii. 18), “Be 
strong in the Lord and in the power of His 
might” (Eph. vi. 10), “Most gladly will I 
rather glory in my infirmities, that the pow- 
er of Christ may rest upon me” (II. Cor. xii. 
9), “Strengthened with all might, according 
to His glorious power” (Col. i.11), are a pro- 
vision made for the bodily life of a saint; 
that there is a decree of spirituality which 
‘nsures the infusion of the life of the Lord 
Jesus for the demands of the physical na- 
ture. A devout scholar has ventured the sug- 
gestion that when St. Paul expressed his pas- 
sion for the Lord Jesus in the words, “That 
I may know Him, and the power of His 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 81 


resurrection, and the fellowship of His suf- 
ferings, being made comformable unto His 
death; if by any means I might attain unto 
the resurrection of the dead,” he did 
not mean to convey the hope of the first 
resurrection as the product of this outpour- 
ing of a consecrated life, but that the very 
life of Jesus should so fill his mortal body 
that he would be preserved unto the time 
of the descent of the Lord from heaven, 
though it might be yet distant. Is there 
not a confirmation of this in his prayer for 
the Thessalonian Christians (I. Thess. v. 23), 
‘May your whole spirit and soul and body 
be preserved blameless unto the coming of 
our Lord Jesus Christ?” If so, and the 
faith that staggers not will not question it, 
those who are “occupied with Chirst” may 
have a testimony at His judgment seat that 
will glorify Him beyond all the range of or- 
dinary spiritual achievement. For though it 
may please Him, in His own time, to take 
His saints to Himself, as He did the apostle, 
though evidently not through the painful 
processes of disease and decay, their confi- 


82 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


dence in His keeping and life imparting 
promises, must magnify Him and exalt them. 

Believers in the limitless power and meas- 
ureless love of the Lord Jesus, are catching 
a new vision of the will of God. 

How enslaved to dark thought of His will 
have the children of the Most High been. 
The will of God has been a deep shadow on 
their pathway, obscuring the light of pres- 
sent blessing with its possible decrees of sor- 
row. It has been a skeleton in their clos- 
ets, which they have prayed to stay behind 
closed doors. It has been a presence from 
whose cold embrace they have pleaded to be 
released. Their dread of His will has im- 
pelled them to school themselves to be ready 
for its visitation as for the pestilence that 
sweeps through the land. The will of God 
is associated with sick rooms, poverty, loss, 
bereavement, funerals, the open grave. The 
will of God, to such, is always dressed in 
black. And this conception of His will 
gives us sickly Christians, weak faith, empty 
joy, puny conquests. ; 

With many, no thought of the will of God 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 33 


is given, until some calamity presses into 
their lives, and then they awake to such sad 
surmisings as we noted. When we say, ip 
prayer, “Thy will be done,” are we always 
impressed with its significance? God’s will 
is not a vindictive judge, exercising the keen 
scrutiny of inevitable retribution. Ah, how 
we have placed a libel upon our Father's 
great heartedness in all these miserable 
thoughts of Him! His will is a blessed com- 
panion, which illumines our way, cheers our 
spirits, makes glad our lives and brings 
fruitfulness to all that we do. How clearly 
has the true conception of the will of God 
been put into verse in these lines: 


“1 love to kiss each print where Thou 
Hast set thine unseen feet; 
I cannot fear Thee, blessed Will; 
Thine empire is so sweet. 


I know not what it is to doubt; 
My heart is ever gay; 

I run no risk, for come what will 
Thou always hast Thy way. 


I have no cares, O blessed Will! 
For all my cares are Thine; 

I live in triumph, Lord! for Thow 
Hast made Thy triumphs mine.” 


B4 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


And this joyous experience of the sweet- 
‘ness of the will of God is not a sentiment. 
If it be not grounded upon the Word, it is 
unworthy of our entertainment, though as 
an act of the mind it is so exalting. 

We get the new vision of the will of God 
by first comprehending the completed sen- 
tence of our Lord’s uttering, “Thy will be 
done in earth as it is in heaven.” They do 
not fear the will of God there. There is no 
look of sadness in all the celestial company 
as they behold the execution of the will of 
God. That will is in harmony with the wills 
of all who dwell there. There is a wonderful 
freedom from all care in the fulfilment of 
that will. Saints and angels who are em- 
braced in its dispensation know no embar- 
rassment. The will of God is to them, their 
noblest aspiration, their highest good, their 
fullest joy. What a revelation of that will 
is disclosed in the familiar saying of the Lord 
Jesus, “There is joy in the presence of the 
angels of God, over one sinner that repent- 
eth!” While uncertain faith is wondering 
if its salvation is made sure, while it stum- 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 85 


bles on in gloom and perplexity, the glad 
notes of praise in the heavenly places are 
ringing out the very testimony of the Word, 
“God our Saviour willeth that all men should 
be saved and come to the knowledge of the 
truth;” “the Lord is not willing that any 
should perish, but that all should come to re- 
pentance.” It was a bright day to us all, 
when we awakened to the truth that He has 
told us His will concerning our salvation. 
And we have grown bold to claim that if we 
were to be missing from the hosts of the re- 
deemed ones, unworthy as we are, the lack 
must bring pain to His heart. And so know- 
ing our calling and election, we make it sure 
for His sake, who embraces us in “the riches 
of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” 

And we know not only that He has re- 
deemed us, and that we are now saved; but 
we behold His will in our freedom from con- 
scious sin. “This is the will of God, your 
sanctification.” Aye, He draws us on by the 
bands of His dear love to desire heart cleans- 
ing, to reach the ideal of daily living He has 
for us, just because He wills it, and because 


$e DIVINE bes/E FOR THE BODY. 


we know it is the atmosphere of the heavert 
ly society. 

The Spirit leads us yet onward to anoth- 
er view of the will of God. Not only does 
He will that we should be saved and sancti- 
fied, but as there is no conflict with disease 
in heaven, the will that is to be done on 
earth as in heaven must embrace the desire 
of God that His children should be in health. 

We are not concerned now with human ex- 
perience, with the many problems of sick- 
ness and the questions of why such a host 
of believers have made sickness a chariot to 
mount to rounds of spiritual conquest. Our 
present interrogation is, “If the will of God 
in heaven is expressed in the fullest manifes- 
tation of His power towards all that glor- 
ious company, may we not believe the same 
is true of its earthly fulfilment? When the 
leper came to Jesus, crying, “Lord, if Thou 
wilt. Thou canst make me whole,” His “1 
will,” proved not an isolated exception to the 
divine purpose. And His healing “all that 
had need of healing” demonstrated that His 
Father’s will on earth is that those who can 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THA BODY. 87 


believe, may have a foretas/e of that health 
which is the heavenly orler. When we ut- 
ter the familiar prayer, therefore, “Thy will 
be done in earth, as in heaven,” shall we lim- 
it the Holy One of Isra»\, and pervert the ev- 


ident intention of evr loving Father? He} 


who does not “afflict nillingly’ may for a sea- 


gon, permit Ilis *ored ones to walk through | 


i 
| 


PTT: go 


the fire of diseuse; but that they should be| 
perpetually in that furnace, violates the law | 









ject here, by affirming tha 
been led by the Spirit to 


Ad? 


> are catching with rever-- 


ji) be further treated, we nas TT 


4 
j 


children should be dontinually bound by the (> 
shackles of sickness. If they have come to 





this vision by a full surrender to the Holy 
Ghost, let not those who have remained in 
the camp presume to gainsay the testimony 
of the Joshuas and Calebs, who have brought 
back a good report of the land; let not 
those who would environ the Word with cau 


38 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


tious interpretations, arrogate to themselves 
the authority to restrain His brave ones who 
would “stand perfect and complete in all the 
will of God.” 


(Geet) 
ANIA) 
NO, 


Chapter IV. 
THE DIVINE PROVISION (Concluded) 


Healing in the Atonement. Life in the 
glorified body of the Lord Jesus for the 
physical needs of the believer. 


E have spoken of sickness as a bondage. 

Who will question it? Is there any 
congruity between the liberty that is 

in Christ and the oppression that accompan- 
ies pain and weakness? We are-the servants 
of the Lord, and as such, require strength 
for our work. We are to manifest the joy of 
the Lord by bright lives and joyous spirits. 
But a sick body is not the normal condition 
for these expressions of the divine presence. 
Possibly, nothing so fosters care and dread 
apprehension as the prostrating of the phy- 
sical powers. Herein is the wide realm of 
Satan, in which he clouds the mind, para- 
lyses faith, quenches hope and drags down to 
death. Oh, how the world is writhing un- 
der the taskmastership of the enemy, call- 
ing his servitude by scientific names, grap- 


40 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


pling with it as best it can, because it will 
not know the higher law of its operation! 
Jesus said, “If the Son shall make you 
free, ye shall be free indeed” (John vi. 36) 
We are not ignorant of the spiritual signifi 
eance of this promise. Sin is bondage; and 
the slaves of sin are captive to it. They sing 
their songs of freedom, they garnish their 
prison walls with gay pictures, they think 
themselves the very delineation of freedom. 
But we see their latter end, and behold in 
their remorse the sad witness that “whoso- 
ever committeth sin is the servant of sin” 
(John vi. 34). “When our Lord stood in the 
synagogue in Nazareth (Luke iv. 16-21), and 
applied to Himself the prophecy in Isaiah 
Ixi., saying, “The Lord hath sent me to pro- 
claim release to the captives: to set at liber- 
ty them that are bruised,” He defined His 
mission to mankind. Ere He was born, the 
angel commanded that His name should be 
called Jesus, for He should save His people 
from their sins. The focal point in the di- 
vine perspective was the cross, where He was 
to redeem from bondage a sin-cursed world, 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. a 


We know that this bondage is not servi- 
tude to a condition. If the Liberator is a 
person, the prison-keeper must also be a per- 
gon. Therefore we adduce that though men 
taking their lives into their own hands, and 
“regulating them by a system of their own 
construction,” think themselves free, because 
they will not acknowledge the personality of 
the Redeemer, they verily have made for 
themselves a prison house and the devil holds 
the key. In these days when even some pro- 
fessedly Christian teachers are calling sin by 
mild terms, saying there is nothing to be for- 
given, and smilingly relegating Satan to the 
non-existence he so loves to indoctrinate into 
the minds of the unstable, we do well to trace 
again the sad life of our Lord and find its 
controlling motive. Those who have sub- 
mitted to the leading of the Spirit behold 
no idle fancy in the compassion He felt for 
the sinning and suffering: His tears over im- 
penitent Jerusalem were not a sentimental 
effusion; His “ye would not” voiced the 
agony of a heart that longed to bless where 
it eould not; and His expiring groan on Cal- 


4B. DIVINE LIFE FOR THE 30DY. 


vary was. the completion of that momentous 
transaction, by which He should “deliver 
them who through fear of death were all 
their lifetime subject to bondage.” We can- 
not think lightly of this life and sacrifice of 
the Man of Sorrows. The very omnipotence 
of Deity was coupled with the helplessness of 
humanity and the Atonement of Jesus Christ 
became the charter of our freedom. 

If the Son, by His atonement, makes us 
free, what is the measure of that freediom? 
First, we know that it insures the believer 
immunity from judgment. Having“ passed 
from death unto life,” we “shall not come 
into judgment’, (John v. 24). Then we know 
the liberating power of the Son is operative 
now, for “the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth 
us from all sin.” But does the freedom end 
with sin? What of the fruits of sin? Is the 
spiritual nature of a man only, embraced in 
the proclamation of emancipation? Shall 
the body, which has been the vehicle for the 
commission of sin, inflicted with the penal- 
ties of sin, continue in its evident bondage? 

St. Peter declares that He “bare our sins 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 43 


in his own body on the tree.” The writer 
of the first gospel also affirms that in His 
healing of the sick, the very same prophecy 
which was fulfilled in St. Peter’s statement 
was also brought to a fruition in His earth- 
ly ministry (Matt. viii. 16, 17). We cannvt 
avoid the logical conclusion that St. Mat- 
thew would not make this sweeping asser- 
tior concerning Isaiah liii. 4, unless it was 
the mind of the Spirit that believers should 
so accept it. In the text, “Surely, he hath 
borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows,” 
we find that the word “griefs” is interpreted 
“disease” and “sickness” in Deut. vu. 15; 
xxviii. 61; I. Kings xvii. 17; II. Kings i. 
2; viii. 8; II. Chron. xvi. 12; xxi. 15, and else 
where, and the word “sorrows” is rendered 
(physical) “pain” in Job xxxiii. 19. The 
translation of Lesser, including the fifth 
verse, is: “He was despised and shunned by 
men; a man of pains and acquainted with 
disease... . . . But only our disease did He 
bear Himself, and our pains He carried while 
we indeed esteemed Him stricken, smitten 
of God and afflicted. Yet He was wounded 


44 DIVINE LIFE F?2 THE BODY. 


for our transgressions, He was bruised for 
eur iniquities, . . . and through His 
bruises was healing granted to us.” 

St. Paul tells us that Christ was crucified 
to redeem us from the curse of the law (Gal. 
iii. 13). By reference to Deut. xxviii and 
kindred passages, we find that sickness was 
the emphasised form of the curse. Niot only 
did our Lord “heal all that had need of heal- 
ing” because His great heart was moved 
with sympathy for those who were on the 
earth at that time, but this work was re- 
demptive, the foretaste of that millennial 
age, when His sacrificial efficacy shall reach 
out to the entire earth, in the bestowment of 
perfect health to all men and the restora- 
tion of Nature to her original beauty and 
utility. 

As we have noted that bondage to sin is 
really submission to a personal force, which 
the Word of God calls the devil, so we have 
the testimony that those who are in the 
bondage of sickness are likewise under his 
malignant power. We read in Acts x. 38, 
that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 45 


the Holy Ghost and with power, who went 
about doing good, healing all that were op- 
pressed with the devil.” The meaning of 
this passage is obvious. The cases healed 
were not only demoniacal possessions, but all 
sicknesses. Concerning the woman loosed of 
her infirmity, the Master Himself said, “This 
daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath 
bound, lo, these eighteen years” (Luke xiii, 
16). We observe that in the descriptions of 
our Lord’s healings, terms are used that indi- 
cate His antagonism to the spiritual agency 
that operated in the diseases by which the 
sick were afflicted. In giving liberty to the 
possessed of demons, He cast out the de- 
mons. In healing Peter’s wife’s mother, He 
“rebuked” the fever, employing the same 
word as He used in quelling the fury of the 
tempest. By a logic which His enemies 
could not resist, He proves to them that His 
miracles were not as they charged, done by 
Beelzebub, the prince of the demons, but by 
the Holy Ghost. And He confirms His own 
resistance of the devil, by qualifying the sev- 
enty with “power over all the power of the 
enemy.” 


46 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


The superintendence of disease so clearly 
attributed to the devil in the case of Job is 
not an ancient superstition, from which we 
have graduated under the more enlightening 
rays of modern science and good sense. The 
conditions are unchanged. If there is a per- 
sonal devil that displays the same tactics in 
the world of sin as we find in the history of 
the characters in the Word; if the nature of 
sin is unchanged, and the nature of sickness 
remains as then, there is left us no other al- 
ternative, in all honesty, than the conviction 
that he is yet the author of physical suffer- 
ing. The reader of the book of Job will re- 
mark that while in chapters one and two, it 
is Satan that afflicts the servant of God, in 
the forty-second chapter, it is God who heals 
him. Here again is the teaching that God 
holds a position contrary to the devil. The 
atonement for sickness is thus foreshadowed. 

The apostle who pleaded three times for 
the removal of the thorn in the flesh, does 
not attribute it to God, but calls it a mes- 
senger of Satan. The fact that he brought it 
to God is evidence that it was an invasion, 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 47 


not of God, but an enemy. It was only when 
he was made to see that the sovereignty of 
the Lord was to be manifested through its 
remaining, that he could say he would glory 
in his infirmity, that the power of Christ 


should rest upon him. And his rejoicing in/ Pp 


this divine bestowment of endurance is final!’ 
proof that the cause of his suffering was not)" 


from the hand of God, but a foreign agency. k 


In Hebrews ii. 14, it is revealed that 


through death, Jesus destroyed him that had 


the power of death, even the devil. By a 
simple process of reasoning, we reach the 
*ollowing conclusion: Death is disease ma- 
tured; whether it its incipiency or develop- 
ment, disease is an expression of death. If 
the devil has the power of death, that is di- 
sease brought to fruition, the devil must 
have the power of disease, which is death 
being developed. We note that the passage 
reads, “that through death, he might destroy 
him, the devil, and deliver them, who. . . 
were subject to bondage.” Is there not here 
the teaching that to them who embrace the 
completed atonement, the Lord Jesus Christ 


48 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


gives power over him in his every malicious 
manifestation in physical ills? 

We have remarked that the healings in the 
Gospel history are a foreshadowing of that 
millennial day, when “the inhabitant shall 
not say, I am sick,” when “they shall not 
hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain,” 
when the Sun of Righteousness arising “with 
healing in His wings, shall make real to all 
mankind the joys of restoration which glad- 
dened the few in Judea, Samaria and ‘Gali- 
lee (Isa. xxxiii. 24; xi. 9; Mal. iv. 2). A sig- 
nificant feature of that blessed age is the in- 
carceration of Satan in the abyss (Rev. xx. 1- 
3). Is there any ground for associating the 
absence of the devil from the earth during 
this period, with the universal health with 
which all men shall be blessed? The answer 
comes from a study of Ephesians ii. 2. In 
this passage, Satan is called the prince of 
the power of the air. The word “air” 
(Greek aer) means the lower atmosphere. It 
has been given to the end of the nineteenth 
century to disclose the real meaning of this 
title. The germ-theory of disease, while not 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 49 


at all recognising the truth we are tracing, 
has demonstrated that all disease is the pro- 
duct of the invasion in the bodies of humani- 
ty, of minute animalculae, that float in the 
air. Reading between the lines in the Apos- 
tle’s teaching, we are constrained to regard 
his words as indicating that Satan is the 
source of these destructive germs. Conse- 
quently when he is imprisoned, when the 
Prince of Peace shall rule over the territory 
now held by the prince of the power of the 
air, the earth will not only rejoice in pres- 
ence of the great Author of health, but the 
very atmosphere, burdened as is all nature 
during the entire dispensation of evil, shall 
be purified through his absence. Surely the 
simple hearted believer will not hesitate to 
see from this, the truth we are seeking to 
impress, that Satan is the presiding spirit 
in the physical sufferings of mankind, and 
that if the atonement of the Lord Jesus will 
finally bring in the universal conferment of 
health, it is competent to meet the assaults 
of the enemy, now in the lives of His own. 

The faith that “is not a suppliant, but a 


50 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


crowned queen” has laid hold of this wonders 
ful provision with a grasp and proof of real- 
ity that wilh not question its verity. This 
faith sees something more in the resurrec- 
tion body of the Lord Jesus than the pledge 
of our resurrection. He is in the heavenly 
places, not alone to intercede for our spirit- 
ual needs, but He sits upon His Father’s 
throne, “far above all principality, and pow- 
er, and might, and dominion,” all “in subjec- 
tion under His feet;” of which power, “He 
made a show openly, triumphing over them,” 
in order that His life might be the possession 
of the saints. See Eph. i. 19-23; Col. ii. 15. 

That “we are members of His body” now 
indicates that His life flows through that 
body as the quickening, vitalising element of 
the Church. As this life is apprehended 
only by faith, and the measure of that ap- 
prehension determines the quantity of life 
received, we are assured by the entire testi- 
mony of the Word, that the life of Jesus, for 
physical needs is at the disposal of the saints, 
in such degree as they by faith may be able 
to appropriate. 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY, 51 


We are not unmindful that this statement 
will be received by those to whom it is new, 
with surprise, and perhaps, suspicion. But we 
are persuaded that a reverent investigation 
of the deeper teachings of St. Paul relating 
especially to his own experenice, will re- 
veal its truthfulness and preciousness. In 
II. Cor. vi. 9, he reports himself “as dying, 
and behold we live.” This death process as 
a constant experience is revealed in such sen- 
tences as “I die daily” (I. Cor. xv. 31); “We 
nad the sentence of death in ourselves” (II. 
Cor. i. 9); “Always bearing about in 
the body of the dying of the Lord Jesus” (II. 
Cor. iv. 10); “Delivered unto death for Je- 
sus sake” (v. 11). Whatever the thorn, the 
messenger of Satan may have been, it cer- 
tainly was accompanied by manifestations of 
physical weakness. Else, the entire incident 
becomes a mere play upon words. When he 
declares that he will glory in his infirmities, 
he employs the very term used by the evan- 
gelist in Matt. viii. 17, where it stands for 
physical weakness. And he admits the 
charge of the Corinthians that his “bodily 


52 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


presence is weak.” Refer to II. Cor. x. 1-3, 
7. When he alludes to his first coming (I. 
Cor. ii. 3), he confesses that he was with 
them in much weakness. As this word is the 
game as translated infirmity above, and is 
used of physical dying in two other passages, 
it would be amiss to regard this mention of 
himself as to a spiritual strengthlessness 
only. Indeed, we do not look for such a con- 
fession from a man who can say to the same 
congregation “great is my boldness towards 
you;” which is emphasised by other refer- 
ences to his abounding sufficiency in spirit- 
ual things. 

Associated with these assertions of the 
presence in his life of the death processes, we 
find the triumphant testimony that they are 
met and more than overcome by a living in- 
dwelling. Taking the passages already con- 
sidered, we observe that when he says, “We 
had the sentence of death in ourselves,” he 
adds “that we shoud not trust in ourselves, 
but in God, which raiseth the dead.” If this 
is reference to the stoning at Lystra as many 
suppose, it confirms the belief that he simply 


D\WINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 53 


survived the ordeal by which Stephen was 
martyred, and arose by the power of God. 
If it was only an ordinary attack of weakness 
or illness, the intervention of a supernatural 
hand was not less evident. Remark that the 
gladsome note by which he concludes his de- 
scription of the death process in II. Cor. iv. 
10, 11, is “That the life also of Jesus might 
be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” Does 
not this give a new meaning to the familiar 
Galatians ii. 20? “The life which I now live 
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of 
God.” If Christ lived in him, because of his 
deadness through the crucifixion of self, was 
that life limited to spiritual quickening 
only? An investigation of II. Cor. xii. 7-10, 
discloses to us that our Lord’s answer to 
the importunate and expectant prayer of His 
servant was, that whatever the weakness 
which was to be the manifestation of the 
buffeting of Satan, it was as well to be the 
necessary condition for the display of the 
divine life and might. No marvel then, that 
when the consciousness of this wonderful and 
inexhaustible treasure of strength in the per- 


64 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


son of his Lord broke upon him, he should 
exclaim “When I am weak, then am I strong.” 

We are aware that the processes of death 
in the physicalman are as necessary as the 
processes of life. There is a constant break- 
ing down of tissue in the system, which food 
and rest repair. Excess of nourishment frill 
produce congestion, because the life proces- 
ses exceed in volume the necessarily corres- 
ponding death processes. Lack of nourish- 
ment on the contrary will give supremacy 
to the death processes, because the corres- 
ponding life processes are deficient. We see 
then, that health comes by the balancing in 
proper adjustment of these two forces, so 
unlike, yet so essential, each to the other. 
But St. Paul caught the meaning of the 
physical being of the believer, which comes 
under another principle, not different, but 
advanced. In the servants of God, there ure 
experiences of physical weakness which are 
not in the realm of merely fleshy exhaus- 
tion They grow weary in the work, they 
feel as other men the sensations of physica’ 
decay. But their walk with God, their bear. 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. Du 


ing the burdens of others, their outpouring 
of sympathy for the suffering entail a deple- ' 
tion of strength, which food and rest are 
not altogether competent to meet. And bes 
cause these drains upon the physical nature 
are the consequences of touch with sin and 
sinners, the servants of the Lord are inti- 
mately brought into contact with Satan 
himself, the author of both sin and suffer- 
ing. Above every other ground for believ- 
ing that the resurrection life of the glorified 
Son of God is designed for those who will, 
to draw upon it, this stands pre-eminent. 
They need His life, for the very reason that 
His life alone will meet their need. Do we 
ever think, when we lean upon material 
things for our refreshment in the life of 
service, that we are trying to obtain from 
the wrong source the fulness of our supply? 
He alone can make up to us the strength 
lost in battles waged against evil, and the 
prince of darkness. To be sure, if we do 
not recognise Satan in our daily contacts, 
do not realise that all the suffering which 
renders our life of service one of hardship, 


54 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


is from him, we are not qualified to esteem 
the wonderful provision our exalted Jesus 
had made for us in His own person. But 
that the Apostle whose experience we have 
noted, both beheld Satan as the agent of 
weakness and comprehended and utilised 
this means of strength impartation, is to us 
beyond question. 

In his teaching of Ephesians five, the 
mysterious union of Christ with the believer 
is described by the words, “They two shall 
be one flesh.” Is this a present realisation? 
He leaves us to find the answer for ourselves 
If we are “complete in Him, in whom dwel- 
leth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” 
should there exist a lack in any part of ow 
being? 

“Divine healing is just divine life. It is 
the headship of Christ over the body. It is 
the life of Christ in the physical frame. It 
is the union of our members with the very 
body of Christ, and the inflowing life of 
Christ in our living members. It is as real 
as His risen and glorified body. It is as rea- 
sonable as the fact that He was raised from 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 57 


the dead, and is a living man with a true 
body, and a rational soul today, at God’s 
right hand. That living Christ belongs to 
us in all His attributes and powers. We are 
members of His body, His flesh and His 
bones; and if we can only believe and re- 
ceive it, we may live upon the very life of 
the Son of God.” 

Is there not a suggestion of this teaching 
in the well known text, “I am come that 
they may have life; and that they may have 
it abundantly?” May not the first provision 
of life be for salvation as we commonly 
think of it, and the latter, the abundant life 
that reaches down into every need of the be- 
liever, and supplies lavishly? We recall too, 
that in (I. Tim. vi. 12, 19), Timothy is ad- 
monished to “lay hold on the life eternal.” 
Certainly, we know that Timothy is not in 
need of eternal life as the means of salvation, 
seeing he has long been an honored servant 
of God. Is it not that the life, which in the 
latter part of the chapter is called, “the life 
indeed,” is to be a present experience, and 
is to demonstrate its vitalising energy, where- 


58 DIVINE LiFE FOB THE BODY. 


ever the death particles are operative? 
When we enter into the experience of (Eph. 
iii. 16-19), “Strengthened with might by 
His Spirit in the inner man, ... . filled 
with all the fulness of God,” is there any 
law by which we are bound to restrict this 
unqualified measure of divine indwelling to 
the spiritual needs alone? Triumphant 
faith will not consent to such a limitation. 
We are prepared now to estimate and 
piize, not only the privilege, but the power 
of our bodies being the temples of the Holy 
Ghost. He is to dwell in us, not alone to 
reveal to us heavenly visions, to strengthen 
us in spiritual might, but to blessedly pos- 
sess the physical man. It were enough for 
the Apostle to have said, “Your spirits are 
the temples of the Holy Ghost” had God 
designed that only the spiritual nature 
should have been affected by His residence 
in the saint. But the bodies, the channels 
of sin, the sphere of suffering because of ain, 
are the property of the Spirit. The more 
we contemplate Romans viii. 11, “If the 
Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the 


DIVINE LICE FOR THE BODY. 59 


dead, dwell in you, He that raised up Christ 
from the dead shall also quicken your 
mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in 
you,” the more we see its closely linked 
relation to the physical life of the believer 
in the present time. Lest some might be 
inclined to regard this promise as related to 
the resurrection, we may say with assurance 
that St. Paul has given us a formula of in- 
terpretation in I. Cor. xv. 51-54. The 
raised body of the dead is the buried cor- 
ruptibe body that in the resurrection be- 
comes incorruptible. The mortal body 
which becomes immortal is the body that 
is changed, or translated. Hence when he 
says in (Romans viii. 11), that the Spirit 
shall quicken our mortal bodies, he does not 
refer to bodies that have passed through the 
finished process of physical dying, but living 
bodies, which are renewed by the indwelling 
Spirit. 

No longer are we in bondage to the old 
sentiment, that the body is a miserable tene- 
ment in which we endure our confinement 
natil at last we are released But it becomes 


6U DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


- the scene of sanctifying inworking which 


pressing into every niche of our being per- 
meates the whole with its holy energy, and 
insures the possession and experience of its 
very life. To have the Holy Ghost dwell in 
us is the synonym of health. If “the King’s 
daughter is all glorious within,” we may not 
hesitate to claim that the outer being will 
be penetrated and vivified by the inner 
glory and potency. And the Spirit, “which 
is the earnest of our inheritance, until the 
redemption of the purchased possession,” 
becomes indeed an earnest, taking the Word 
of Christ, which also dwells in us richly, 
translates every promise to us into the very 
vitality of Christ’s own life. So that, in 
truth, “we live and yet not we, but Christ 
liveth in us.” We thus reach the sublime 
height of possibility, in His living again, 
and in us, the very life He once lived in the 
flesh. 


Chapter Vv, 
THE DIVINE COMMAND 


The Lord Himself the MHealer. Satanie 
agency in the operation of disease. Obedience, 
Ged’s way of safety. 


N honored Christian teacher once said, 
“When I wish my watch repaired, I 
do not consult a merchant. Nor do 

I aimlessly walk about seeking some chance 
helper in my need. I know the man that 
is competent to perform the work I have in 
hand, it is the man with the sign of the 
clock. So when my body is impaired, if I 
am abiding in God, I shall not run hither 
and yon, in quest of a healer. My spiritual 
instinct at once tells me that He is sole 
Healer. And not only because I know that 
He is full of sympathy for those in distress, 
but He has announced Himself as my 
Healer.” The burden we would lay upon 
the hearts of God’s children is this—If God 
has declared that He is our Healer, both by 


62 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


spiritual consciousness and the testimony of 
the Word, are we at liberty to treat His de- 
fined office with complacent indifference? 
So often do we hear excellent people say, 
‘Yes, I think this is a beautiful truth. It 
must be perfecty delightful to live such a 
life of momentary dependence upon God. 
But then, you know few have such faith. 
“Alas, how many dear saints have fallen un- 
der the spell of this spiritual opiate, ad- 
ministered by Satan! Such are as far away 
from the experience of the blessing of Di- 
vine life for the body as those who violently 
oppose the truth. There is no advantage to 
one’s self, no praise to God, in our believing 
that others may have what we do not ven- 
ture to possess. 

The words of an outgoing missionary to 
China are worthy of being engraved upon 
our hearts, with imperishable characters; 
“We are responsible for all that God can do 
in us, and for us by His Holy Spi- 
rit.” Is there not a grave question 
of possible condemnation in these words? 
How ready we are to admire the high 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 63 


ideals made real in other lives, and 
remain in absolute inaction ourselves! It is 
not a matter which we may or may not con- 
sider, just as the fancy may take us. Hnu- 
man caprice may play its part in many of 
life’s turnings. But here, we are shut up to 
the one fixed obligation. Shall we obey 
God? If when this truth is unfoded to our 
‘intelligence, we choose to make it a matter 
only of pleasant contemplation, are we less 
infidels than those who reject the truth en- 
tirely? Ah, some of us have learned that 
bitter lesson, that “whatsoever is not of 
faith is sin.” When the Holy Ghost has 
made us captive to His gracious leading, the 
performance of the will of God will not be 
a question of expendiency. We shall obey 
Knowing these things we shall obtain our 
blessedness by doing them. 

As we have noted, God declares Himself 
to be our Healer. (Ex. xv. 26). He pledges 
Himself that certain spiritual conditions, 
which grow out of obedience shall be ac- 
companied by the taking away of sickness. 
(Ex. xxiii. 25). He expressly qualifies Himself 


64 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


as the life of His obedient ones in Deut. xxx. 
20. David testifies that He not only for- 
gives sins, but heals diseases, (Psalms ciii. 3). 
We come now to consider that God does not 
divide honors in this realm of power. He 
only is the Healer of His faithful children. 
Others may get healing; they may thank 
Him for blessing the means they have em- 
ployed. They may say that God Himself 
has done it. But He has not. And the half 
truth must remain uncorrected until “the 
day of the Lord.” We do not say that God 
will not bless means. Nay. He loves with 
such tenderness, He yearns to help with 
such longing that He will reach His chil- 
dren wherever they are minded to meet 
Him. But such believers are not standing 
upon covenant ground. They are simply tak- 
ing their places with the rest of the world, 
and so far as obeying Giod is concerned have 
no more substance for testimony than un- 
believers, who do not trust Him for any- 
thing. The point we must settle is, What 
does God want me to do? Oh for the mind 
of Samuel to cry out in this case, “Spesk 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 63 


Lord; for Thy servant heareth.” Or of pen- 
itent Saul, “Lord, what wilt thou have me 
to do?” Am I at all free to do as I choose? 
Will my Father be as pleased with me if I 
fall short of His command as if I fufill it? 
Must I “follow ‘on to know the Lord” in this 
matter, or may I not just acknowledge my 
helplessness to obey and crave His compas- 
sion? He is very indulgent. He knows 
our frame, He remembers that we are dust. 
He will not exact of us more than we are 
able to do or be. But He must have the 
willingness to meet His will. We have 
stated that it is His will that His dear chil- 
dren shall be in health. But this can be 
only when they are in touch with Him. 
While He will deal kindly with us in our 
weak faith, our half hearted obedience, He 
permits us to reap the fruit of our lack of 
consecration. As the health, which He 
wills shall be the portion of His dear ones, 
is dependent upon implicit obedience to His 
command, so any flaw in that requirement 
must leave us exposed to the attacks of di- 
BeaAse. 


Kia onl 18 


Inock 


66 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


We can best comprehend the weight of 
God’s command that He shall be accepted 
by us as our Healer, by noting that disease 
is the expression of a spiritual condition. 
And further, we require to see once more 
the personality behind the disease. Science 
affirms that disease arises from a predisposi- 
tion of the patient, or from influences with- 
out the patient. It is “the introduction into 
living organisms of minute parasitic forms 
of life, and their subsequent multiplication, 
to the obstruction of the vital functions.” 
Here science halts. It reverently stands 
in the porch of the temple of life, but does 
not assume to enter the sacred previncts. 
Science unfolds all that it can of the nature 
of health and disease, by its experiments up- 
on the material in man’s physical being. 
But life and health and disease have a spi- 
ritual source. As we have seen that God, our 
Father is the Author of life and health, and 
that our blessed Lord Jesus fulfilled His 
Father’s will in “healing all that had need 
of healing,” so the very position they oc- 
cupy in its realm of life’s bestowment is 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 67 


tacit evidence that the author of disease 18 
also supernatural, and that the roots of sick- 
ness, however they have their fruitage in 
seemingly material forms, are spiritual. 

We are therefore, competent to accept 
God as our Healer, to obey His command to 
be healed according to His word, only when 
we recognise through God’s vision the dia- 
bolical origin and perpetuation of disease. 
This will not be easy to receive by those 
who have inherited the belief in the purely 
material nature of man’s physical being. 
But we have no ground for appropriating 
the life of Jesus for our mortal bodies, un- 
less, in taking the Life-Giver we stand with 
Him in clear conviction of the power and 
persistence of the life destroyer. Are we 
ever to know the experience of the devil’s 
fleeing from us? James iv. 7, becomes real 
to us only when we are in the way of obedi- 
ence. Submission to God is the synonym of 
putting Satan to flight. But we do not get 
to the point of true submission to God, 
until we see with God’s vision the malig- 
nance and force of the adversary. St. Paul 


68 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


could say, “We are not ignorant of his de- 
vices.” (II Cor. ii. 11). But how few there are 
among us who comprehend the manifold in- 
ventions of Satan to entrap the unwary! 
Has he not yet the masterly knack of “trans- 
forming himself as an angel of light?” Who 
of us have so far grasped the present day 
manifestations as to cry out with St. Peter, 
“Your adversary the devil as a roaring lion 
walketh about seeking whom he may de- 
vour?” Ah, he has skilfully administered the 
anesthetic which has lulled the Church into 
conscienceless apathy. 

And because believers have tried to obey 
God’s command for healing and health, 
without cognisance of this all important fea- 
ture of the way of obedience, they have 
failed to get the touch of the Healer. He 
draws us to experience His own detestation 
of the enemy we are to conquer, that we may 
fight the good fight of faith as Jesus Himself 
did. We lay this burden then, upon the 
dear children of God everywhere. As you 
are filled with the Spirit, get the Spirit’s 
view of Satan. As you would be obedient 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. ov 


to God, wait upon Him for His own resist- 
ance of the adversary. Grow to make more 
and more real the author of all the suffering, 
and you will be able to claim deliverance for 
yourselves and others. “For the battle is not 
yours, but God’s. “Be careful not to modify 
the portraiture of the devil which the Word 
reveals. Pray to be delivered from knowing 
intellectualy in this matter, what you do not 
experience in your inmost being. “For there 
is no condemnation so great as light not 
heartily embraced.” 

We may sum up the discussion of this 
question of our relation to the divine com- 
mand, by noting once more that the Lord 
having declared Himself the One who 
should take away from His people all sick- 
ness, obedience to it implies utter yielded- 
ness to Him. If we fail to see that the re- 
moval of sickness is a supernatural proced- 
ure, because the impartation of sickness is 
from a supernatural being, and take our 
case into our own hands, trying to do the 
best we can to help ourselves, we simply pass 
from under the Divine care-taking and as- 


7 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


sume the responsibility. Is there not strong 
teaching in God’s protest to Egypt, the land 
which gave physicians to the world, “In 
vain dost thou use many medicines; there is 
no healing for thee” (Jer. xlvi. 11). We 
again concede that the child of God, who 
seeks the way of the world in recovering 
from sickness, may pray for a blessing upon 
the means used, may get well, and give 
thanks for restoration. But this is not tak- 
ing the life of the Lord Jesus, according to 
the divine provision. It is a retreat from 
the “fight of faith” under cover of expedi- 
ency, and the believer instead of being 
“more than conquerer through Him that 
loved us” fails to win a battle over Satan, 
and makes the next conflict easier for the 
adversary. If merely getting well of our 
sickness is the great end for which we strive 
in our struggles with Satan in physical ills, 
then any device is legitimate. But thiose who 
“dwell deep” with God catch a higher 
meaning to the dispensation of afflictions in 
the flesh. As Jesus learned obedience by 
the things which He suffered (Heb. v. 8), 80 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. fi 


they who would be made “perfect through 
sufferings” are quiet before God in these 
periods of flesh failings, that they may know 
the mind and way of God. Think you, be- 
loved, if Asa had turned to God in his in- 
firmity (II. Chron. xvi. 12, 13), his obituary 
would have stood as it has for centuries, a 
warning to those who are able to take the 
lesson? Oh, instead of flying in desperation 
for relief from our physical aches and weak- 
nesses to any help that may be available, let 
us be still before Him, who has commanded 
us to regard Him alone as our Liberator, 
and catch from Him the new meaning 
which He will put upon each fresh triumph 
He enables us to achieve through tha 
atonement He has effected for us and the 
indweling life He alone can bestow. 

This obedience, learned through the vis. 
ion of God respecting the author of sickness 
leads us on to do all the will of God accord- 
ing to His Word. We cannot longer regard 
the command in (James v. 14), as a relic of 
an age of unscientific treatment, while the 
world was waiting for the wonderful con- 


T2 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


quests of medical science in the latter times. 
It must take its place with other New Test- 
ament commands, and be either obeyed or 
repudiated. It would seem unnecessary to 
enter into any explanation of the text. 
Those who oppose the doctrine endeavor to 
show that not physical sickness, but spirit- 
ual is indicated. Others, that the anointing 
of oil was medicinal. Those who have fol- 
lowed the study of the truth as we have dis- 
covered it, up to this point, will not require 
a refutation of these vain devices to explain 
away the simple and evident intention of 
God. The obedient heart will not quibble 
over words, or seek to excuse itself on the 
ground that times have changed, and some 
things in the Word have become obsolete. 
Those who have walked in the Spirit, have 
not hastily rushed into an attempt to ex- 
perience the truth of this command. Their 
acceptance of it has been a natural sequence 
of many steps in faith, and they have taken 
this one with simple confidence that it is a 
part of “all the counsel of God.” And the 
implicit obedience to this command, to call 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY, 13 


for the elders of the Church that they may 
pray over the sick, anointing with oil in the 
name of the Lord, brings not only the 
promised raising up, but health of soul as 
well, for “if he have committed sins, they 
shall be forgiven him.’ 

A glorious result of our complete sur- 
render to His Word, is that while we obey 
His command to be strong in Him, to take 
His life for our bodies, to live out His very 
life to His praise, He in return for this atti- 
tude of faith and submission, challenges us 
to command Him. When we have been 
brought into subjection to His behests, He 
puts Himself in our place, and us in His, 
and pleads, “concerning the work of my 
hands command ye me; call unto Me, and 
I will answer thee, and show thee great and 
mighty things, which thou knowest not; 
Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My 
Name; ask and ye shall receive that your 
joy may be full; If ye abide in Me and My 
Words abide in you, ask what ye will, and it 
shall be done unto you” (Isa. xlv. 11; Jer. 
xxxili. 3; John xvi. 24; xv. 7). 


Chapter VL 
THE DIVINE MOTIVE 


God’s use of sickness. Not intended to be 
permanent. We are His workmanship. The 
severeignty of the Holy Spirit. The body for the 
Lord and the Lord for the body. The Blesser 
more than the blessing. Divine life not alone 
for the sick. The Divine motive apprehended, 
the saints add length of days to a triumphant 
spiritual life. 


HEN we live according to the flesh, 
W our motive is to get well of our sick- 

ness as rapidly as possible, and by 
any means at hand. Sickness seems to press 
us to invent remedies and devise treat- 
ments. And so we live in constant dread of 
disease, and as well, we devote no small 
measure of our time and talents in prepar- 
ing for it. Every symptom a:arms our fears 
and sets our wits to work. God does not 
seem near to us. The rather, we are temnpt- 
ed to think Him afar off. The spirituad 
side of our affliction we fail to note. We 
become absorbed in the attacked materiai, 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 75 


solely. To get out of our pain or our weak- 
ness is our only solicitude. And, if the dis- 
order continues, we fret, wondering why we 
should thus suffer; and possibly, we enter- 
tain hard thoughts of our loving Father. 
When we get well, we praise the Lord for 
His goodness. And truly He is good to us 
in such a case, for we have displayed but 
weak faith in His promised provision for us. 
But let us ask reverently, Does such a pro- 
cedure in our fleshy conflicts as fully glorify 
Him, as absolutely resting in His pledged 
care and healing? When we are fully pos- 
sessed by the Spirit of God, the motive will 
be more lofty than the desperate longing to 
escape our trial. 

Sickness is one of God’s ways of talking 
to His erring children. Instead of panic 
and prescription, His order is obedience and 
prayer. “What saith my Lord to His serv- 
ant?” should take -the place of the com- 
mand to the hastily despatched messenger, 
who is to bring us relief. If we would be 
in God’s covenant way, then, we shall lie 
still before Him, to comprehend the mean- 


16 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


ing of the invasion of disease, and thus pre 
pare ourselves for the healing which He 
waits to confer. We may truthfully stand 
upon the Word and say, “This sickness is 
for the glory of God, that the Son of God 
may be glorified thereby’ (John xi. 4). 
Though the Healer may tarry, as He did 
when His friend Lazarus lay at the point of 
death, the time will not be lost. Fresh vis- 
ions of His love, precious testings of pat- 
ience and the needful humbling of the soul 
will bring us into touch with Him. It is 
here we learn the depth of St. Paul’s word 
to Timothy, “God hath not given us the 
spirit of fear, but of power, and love and of 
a sound mind” (II. Tim. i. 7). In the hush 
of our separation from the world, we shall 
catch the accents of His purpose for us, as 
we eannot in the busy round of service. We 
shall know Him better than when our self 
sufficiency made Him less necessary to us. 
Having the right to claim that we shall not 
be “oppressed with the devil,” for we live 
under the protection of the 91st Psalm, we 
yet come to see that whenever that oppres- 





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eo & 


pb aq 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 17 


sion is permitted, there is some much 
needed lesson for us and some new triumph 
for our God. Therefore we can say of this 
phase of our life of discipline, “In all these 
things we are more than conquerors through 
Him that loved us.” 

But we must just here meet that oft re- 
peated statement that as sickness is 80. 
blessedly used to bring the saint nearer to 
God, therefore it is part of our heavenly 
Father’s wisdom to keep gome in sickness ail 3 A 
the time. Let us not be wiser than God. 
Let us not go beyond what is written. We 
are nowhere instructed that perpetual bond- 
age to sickness is His way of training His 
children. On the other hand, in the heal- 
ing of the palsied man, the raising of the 
son of the widow of Nain, the liberation of 
the infirm woman, the restoration of the 
Samaritan leper and the bestowment of 
sight to the blind men, they glorified God. 
Is He not more glorified, infinitely, when 
He is enabled by the faith of His children, 
to heal them, than though they acquire 
sweet lessons of resignation on beds of rack- 


78 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


ing pain or humiliating weakness? ‘The en- 
tire ministry of the Lord Jesus is proof of 
this. 'Those who have become wedded to 
their sicknesses, are they who fail to com- 
prehend God’s will in this matter, and as 
well, are prone to regard sickness as from 
God’s own hand. If we will not to meet our 
loving Father where He has appointed we 
should, if we insist that our sentimental 
view is more in accord with a sense of right 
than His plainly revealed promises, He must 
simply leave us to work out for ourselves the 
plan of life we have designed. So often 
have we met dear saints of God, bedridden 
for years, and said of them, “What beauty of 
character is here portrayed!” But these very 
Christians, long accustomed to their invalid- 
ism are slow to grasp God’s better way fo) 
them. The bondage of the flesh, to which 
they have so long been used, has wrought 
in them a paralysis of purpose. They might 
wish to get well for the pleasure of enjoying 
health, but that motive will never meet 
God’s power. T'o resist Satan, to claim de 
liverance for the glory of God alone, is be 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. vt’) 


yond them. There is an infatuation in in- 
validism, strange as it may seem, that 
weaves a spell over those who have sought 
and obtained the resignation to bear their 
illnesses. They are so accustomed to the 
atmosphere of the sick room that they have 
not the courage to strike for freedom. 
Hence, we hear them declare, “When God 
gives me the faith, I shall believe and be 
healed.” But that is not God’s way. The 
faith for healing, which as we shall see 
later, is indeed the gift of God, comes only 
to those who will take their position with 
God in the recognition of the source and 
motive which lie behind both the sickness, 
and the healing that is claimed. Unless we 
obey the command, resisting the devil as 
the author of our sickness, and accepting 
Jesus as our Liberator, we shall lhe on our 
beds helpless until the end comes. Let us 
insist, the faith for healing is ours only when 
we stand unqualifiedly upon the Word of 
God in perfect yieldedness to Him, to work 
in us “that which is well pleasing in His 
sight.” 


fy A 


80 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


The ground then for the impotence of the 


“eonfirmed invalid, linked with the belief 


that God is the Author of sickness, is that 
His chastenings are designed to be perma- 

ethers 
nent,_ But how contrary is this to all 
aspects of chastisement! Who proves His love 
to His children by keeping them in the dis- 
comfort of unwholesome correction? “Now, 
no chastening for the present seemeth to be 
joyous, but grievous; nevertheless after- 
ward.” Ah, these dear suffering ones have 
forgotten the afterwards of God’s in- 
tent. The peaceable fruits of righteous- 
ness to them that are exercised there- 
by are not produced at the time of 
the chastening, but afterward, when the 
atmosphere has changed, when the sense of 
God given freedom sweeps through the life, 


A when the motive of accepted discipline 


reaps the glory that will come to our Lord 
through our emancipation. Then too, we 
are to be reminded that chastenings are not 
retributive. Properly speaking, there is no 


j \punishment to them that are in Christ 


Jesus. It is the wicked who are punished. 








fs WAA . 
Pn, ae | we 
AN. 
DIVINE LIFE FOR THE/BODY. 81 


We who are the children pf the Father of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, “dre chastened, that | 
we should not be cohdemned with the | 
world” (I. Cor, xi. 32)! The true meaning of 
chastening is “to educate, to discipline, to 
nurture.” Do these terms indicate that our 
Father loves to see His beloved children 
writhing on beds of sickness, or being con- 
tinuously subject to humiliating weakness? 
If the Word were not so clear as we have 
seen it, as to His will for His own, our Chris- 
tian consciousness would itself give no un- 
certain answer. And, when we learn of the 
Holy Spirit the deep things of God, we come 
also to see that chastenings are not always 
diseases. We are constrained to believe that 
the “sufferings of Christ,’ of which we are 
all made partakers, are not physical bond- 
age to Satan. He who will hold himself ac- 
cording to the revealed will, and judge him- 
self (I. Cor. xi. 31), may endure a great 
fight of afflictions for the Lord’s sake, and 
yet be blessedly kept from ill health. It is 
only when other means of spiritual education 


are not adapted to our needs, that He permits 
aaa 


82 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 
the evil one to afflict us, to bring about in us 
some blessed fruitage. 

We would not criticise these dear children, 
who are preaching and bearing perpetual 
chastisement, in this terrible slavery to 
Satan. But we cannot be less positive than 
His Word. It will not do for us, either, to 
make exceptions, and say “He can do great 
things forsome. Others, He is not so favor- 
able to.” He is no respecter of persons. If 
we may be allowed to speak frankly though 
painfully, we would testify that our exper- 
ience in the sick rooms of the “Shut Ins” 
has revealed that invariably there is some 
measure of skepticism, with reference to 
God’s will to heal, or the manner with which 
God has demonstrated His purpose to heal. 
Those who remain in the bondage of sick- 
ness are there, not because God keeps them 
so, but some hidden factor is insidiously 
working to prevent their laying hold of His 
promised power. The very arguments 
which are constantly set forth, in the pul- 
pits and the sick room, in defense of the 
doctrine of incessant chastisement through 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 83 


physical disorders, when tested by the Word, 
have a tincture of unbelief. Such is the 
mystery of Satan’s beguilings. It is easier 
for one just entering the light, to whom the 
Word of God is a fresh revelation, to step 
out upon the promises, believing them to be 
yea, and “the Amen” unto the glory of God, 
than for those who have accustomed them- 
selves to environ the provision of God for 
our bodies, with the safeguards of human 
prudence. And so, while they have an ex- 
alted name for endurance in a sought resig- 
nation, and while they do honor Him in 
their sweetness and long suffering, they un- 
consciously misinterpret His love and defeat 
His purpose for them. 

The Divine motive is seen in the fact that 
“we are His workmanship.” The builder of 
the great organ is pre-eminently the man 
who understands every part, and its relation 
to other parts. Our Maker should be quali- 
fied to know what is best for our physical 
necessities. He has met the question by 
such a prodigal supply of nourishment, with 
such a variety of food as completely adjusts 


84 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 

our wants and our pleasures. We can do 
ourselves much harm by perverting His pro- — 
vision for us. Grain is capable of becoming 
alcohol, the very soil that produces succu- 
lent fruits is the bed from which noxious 
poisons rise to take their part in destroying 
the creatures of God’s hand. As disease is 
very largely the product of our eating and 
drinking, we are bound by the very fact of 
our being His workmanship, to seek of Him 
the motive that will render our physical life 
most true to His destiny for us. This will — 
not be if we have only self-gratification at 
heart. There is probably no greater fallacy 
in this line than the oft repeated saying, “If 
it tastes good, it must be good.” The con- 
secrated life takes the Word for these 
things, conscientiously accepts the injunc- 
tion, “Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, 
or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of 
God” (I. Cor. x. 31). We do not want to 
make room here for the various food re- 
forms that are coming to the front, though 
we should be unwise not to avail ourselves 
of all the progress which has been made in 








DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 85 


this direction. But our plea is just this, 
that until we get God’s motive for living, 
clearly set before us, our physical life will 
be a prey to those conditions which make 
disease possible. And since we are His 
workmanship, not only spiritually but physi- 
cally, He has the right to such a surrender 
to His wisdom in these matters as will en- 
able Him to “satisfy our mouth with good 
things, so that our youth is renewed like 
the eagle’s” (Ps. cili. 5). 

But this is not all. If we are His work- 
manship, our bodies being the temples of the 
Holy Ghost, which we have of God, and we 
are not our own, every department of the 
physical man comes under the sovereignty 
of the Spirit. Have we not too long 
erred in confiding the workmanship of the 
Spirit to spiritual conditions only? But ob- 
serve, our bodies are the temples of the Holy 
Ghost; bought with a price, we have them 
from God; we are not our own. May we do 
as we please with them? The entire unre- 
generated world cries out, “Yes, we may, 
and we will.” The great company of Chris- 


36 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 

tians in a less positive manner gives out the 
same conviction of right. It matters not 
about the body, so long as the soul is right. 
But the soul cannot be right if the body be 
wrong. Here is the greatly neglected truth. 
The work of the Holy Ghost in us is for the 
entire man. We cannot put asunder that 
which God has joined together. So long as 
we divorce these divinely united parts of 
our being, the workmanship of the divine 
hand, so long must we fall short of the di- 
vine motive. He has authority over our 
flesh. And we glorify God in our body, only 
when that authority is loyally accepted and 
the entire man is surrendered to the rule of 
the heavenly Tenant, who then permeates it 
with His own life, meeting with full adap- 
tion our every need according to His glor- 
ious supply. 

A well-known Christian worker in parting 
with another, gave as his good-bye message, 
“Tt remains to be seen what God can do with 
a man irreversibly given to him.” Golden 
worth lies in this short sentence. It is be- 
cause we are but partially His that His work 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 87 


in us and for us is incomplete. One way of 
meeting this blessed wholeness of consecra- 
tion in the matter of His health for our 
bodies is to believe that He has prepared a 
body for us. We have all been tempted to 
wish that we might have had some choice of 
our physical makeup. We should have left 
out not a few of our inherited perversions, 
we should have qualified ourselves with such 
constitutional resistance as would have in- 
sured our longevity without a pain or a 
weakness. But alas, we were not consulted. 
Shall we lay blame upon our ancestry for 
their sins and errors? Shall we question the 
wisdom of God in allowing us to fall heir 
to numerous ailments? The higher ground 
of destiny as revealed in the divine motive, 
corrects our vision. We have learned that 
our salvation was the subject of God's 
thought before the foundation of the world. 
We were chosen in Christ in that far distant 
time. Was the poor body, a prey to disease, 
without the divine consideration? Surely 
not. If it was to be the temple of the Holy 
Ghost, would it not have a place in the di- 


88 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


vine counsel? Yes. He knew from the be- 
ginning of our struggling career, the frail 
and perishing timber of which our bodies 
were to be made. He made them, with an 
end in view. Not that they should be tol- 
erated tenements until we should cast them 
off as vile encumbrances. But that we 
should lay hold of another body, through 
the indwelling Guest. He prepared this 
first body, knew its limitations and suscepti- 
bilities, only that those conditions of need 
which we so painfully experience should 
press up to appropriate the new body, no 
longer sustained by constitutional vigor, but 
His own life. We thus exchange our weak- 
ness for His strength, and prove that in 
Christ Jesus, we are a new creation, not only 
in our spiritual nature, but the physical. 
And the new body in Christ is to us as real 
a part of His workmanship as was the old 
body according to nature. 

When our bodies become the Lord’s pos- 
session by a full and final quit claim from 
us, when we seek no longer to dominate its 
life and destiny, when we “live and yet not 


eee 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 89 
we, but Christ liveth in us,” we are ready 
to appreciate that “the body is for the 
Lord.” Intellectually, this is not a new doc- 
trine. We have believed that we are not our 
own, that He has purchased us for Himself ; 
yet the limitations we have put upon His 
right to us have hindered His full occu- 
pancy. Now, however, we leave all to Him. 
He may do as He will with His own. We 
are not troubled by the many perplexities 
which burdened us in former days. The 
temptation to worry about our exposures 
and risks is simply handed over to Him. 
All we need know is that we are entirely 
His. That is enough. Nothing can come 
to us that He does not both apprehend and 
measure. Whatever attack breaks upon us is 
but the signal for Him to justify His own 
purpose and protect His own property. This 
body in which we live is no longer ours. 
We have vacated all right to ownership. 
Every nerve, as well as organ has been 
passed over to Him. And this temple is 
dedicated to His glory by this transfer. He 
will glorify H:mself by any means He may 


go DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


choose. We have surrendered all responsi- 
bility. Sudden changes of the weather are 
committed to Him. A sleepless night no 
longer plunges us into the sloughof despond. 
Any unexpected invasion of Satan is met by 
the triumphant Word, “The battle is not 
yours, but God’s.” He has found at last just 
what He has been seeking, a body in which 
He can live out His life. We learn not to 
“touch the ark.” We must be still, while 
others in a like condition are restless and 
dismayed, anxiously striving to deliver 
themselves. He is Lord over all. How sig- 
nificant the terse sentence of the man of 
God, who said, “If you do not crown Him 
Lord of all, you do not crown Him Lord at 
all.” He is Lord of spirit, soul and body, 
everything he claims. 

And not only is the body for the Lord, but 
(I. Cor. vi. 13) the Lord is for the body. 
“There is reciprocity in God’s relations with 
man. That which God has been for me, I 
ought in turn be for Him. And that which 
Iam for Him, He desires again to be for me. 
If, in His love, He gives Himself fully to 








DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. gl 
me, it is in order that I may lovingly give 
myself fully to Him. In the measure in 
which I more or less really surrender to Him 
all my being, in that measure also He gives 
Himself more really to me. God thus leads 
the believer to understand that this aban- 
donment of himself comprises the body, and 
the more our life bears witness that 
that body is for the Lord, the more 
also we experience that the Lord is 
for the body. In saying, ‘The body is for 
the Lord,’ we express the desire to regard 
our body as wholly consecrated, offered in 
sacrifice to the Lord, and sanctified by Him. 
In saying, ‘The Lord is for the body,’ we 
express the precious certainty that our offer- 
ing has been accepted, and that, by His Spir- 
it, the Lord will impart to our body His 
own strength and holiness.” Only those who 
have walked close with God, as the saintly 
writer of these words, can estimate the deep 
truth they convey. When we give God all 
that we have to present to Him, He places 
at our disposal as much of His fulness as we 
are able to appropriate. And the motive of 


Q2 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


our life becomes an intense purpose to per- 
mit Him to glorify Himself in us. Instead 
of narrowing our horizon, of bemoaning our 
leanness, of limiting the Holy One of Israel, 
“More room for God” should be our cry. As 
the body has been the scarred battle-ground 
of sin’s coniicts, so, abandoned to Him, it 
becomes the garden of the Lord, filled with 
beauty and fruitfulness. The divine motive 
will thus be displayed in every temptation 
of the flesh. He will be Victor in us because 
He is the Lord for the body. It is His 
blessed office to make the body the scene of 
His glorious working. Sweetness of living, 
tenderness of spirit, gentleness of touch, 
kindliness of speech and health of the flesh 
will flow from this wonderful partnership of 
the believer and his Lord. 

This union of the saint and the Sanctifier, 
through the complete surrender of each to 
the other, leads the saint to a quiet restful- 
ness in the Lord’s provision. The motive 
being embraced, He knows that every want 
will be met according to its immediate re- 
quirement. He will not desire more than 





DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 93 


His Lord supplies; he will not be content 
with less than his Lord has promised. Like 
his Master in the temptation, he will not 
force his Lord to a miraculous intervention, 
until his Lord’s time has come. Jesus was 
hungry, but rather than go beyond His 
Father’s care in providing bread for His 
hunger at Satan’s behest, He would wait 
until God spread the table for Him. So, 
while the children of the world are full of 
perplexity and solicitude in their physical 
testings, the saint joined by an indissoluble 
bond to the Indweller, is quiet, in the assur- 
ance that the time and the sufficiency will 
be manifested in the Lord’s own season. 
There is an unspeakable calm in this exper- 
lence. “David cried, “My times are in Thy 
hands” (Ps. xxxi. 15). And somay we. We 
do not hasten our departure heavenward by 
an unwise use of the world’s means. We do 
not seek to save our lives by taking them 
into our own hands. “We have this 
treasure in earthen vessels that the excel- 
lency of the power may be of God and not 
of us.” 


04 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


The divine motive finds expression in the 
purpose of the believer that God shall be 
glorified in every little detail of life. Our 
natural inclination is to think some things 
important, others insignificant. Now, we 
come to esteem every occasion for the dis- 
play of the Lord’s power in _ our 
bodies the ground for praise to Him. 
When we are able to testify to some 
marked intervention of His might in 
our behalf, we rejoice that others are 
helped by our witness. “He hath puta new 
song in my mouth; even praise unto our 
God; many shall see it, and fear, and shall 
trust in the Lord” (Ps. xl. 3). Yet, there 
are precious tokens of the Lord’s care of our 
bodies, which we cannot convey to the com- 
prehension of others. The praise is hidden 
in the deeper current of unspeakable secrecy. 
And only when we are committed to the di- 
vine motive for taking Him in His fulness 
does the scope of our praise life open to our 
vision. But are we sure that our little praise 
themes are known and recognised by God 
only? May not the angels, who rejoice over 





DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 95 


one sinner that repents, be just as joyous 
over them as when we may stand before our 
fellows and glorify our Lord by some re- 
markable witness to His power? May it not 
be that if demons are vanquished by the 
triumphs of faith, which are wrought in the 
closets of prayer, they may not also shrink 
before the note of thanksgiving that ascends 
from the same spot? We have dwelt upon 
Ephesians iii. 10 with the growing convic- 
tion that it teaches this precious truth. No 
human ear may hear our grateful song; the 
angels of God and the demons of Satan do 
hear it, to His praise, Whose we are and 
Whom we serve. 


To the intent that now unto the principali- 
ties and powers in heavenly places might be 
known by the church the manifold wisdom of 
God. 

Then, when we are possessed of the mo- 
tive that our bodies are to be the scene of 
the Lord’s triumphs in us, we grow far be- 
yond the mere longing for His blessing. He 
becomes more to us than the best gifts He 


can confer. We are not satisfied with heal- 


96 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


ing that is not the expression of Himselt. 
When the loving bridegroom takes his 
young wife to the home he has fitted for her, 
with a special regard for her every taste and 


longing, and has shown her through all the 
rooms in which she is to be sole mistress, 


she turns her eyes to him in unutterable 
reciprocation of all his affectionate fore- 
thought and says, “To have you is more 
than all this.” So we measure our growth in 
the divine life. If, like the children of Israel, 
we murmur when things displease us; if we 
regard our Father solely as our pledged pro- 
tector and provider; if our cry to Him is 
only when we are pressed by our trials or 
our needs, we are far from our normal posi- 
tion in Him. But we may get beyond this 
utilitarian view of the doctrine of divine 
healing. We may exult in the possession, 
not of His health, but Himself. We need 
this reminder, not once but many times in 
our conflict for life. The moment we are 
satisfied with His bestowments apart from 
Himself, we are on sinking ground. 

And, conversely, when we are altogether 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 97 


married to our Lord, our touch with Him 
is more to Him than the pleasure He exper- 
iences in healing us. It is much to Him that 
we are willing He should impart to us His 
own life,in exchange for ours. He has waited 
‘long years for this result in us, and He 
proves His delight by making us sensible of 
His joy. Even as an earthly father longs to 
bless his children with gifts, and crown 
them with sacrifices that tell of his love. 
Yet he yearns for something more than the 
privilege of ministering to them. The time 
comes when they return his affection. They 
too will make sacrifices ; they too will bestow 
precious evidences of their hearts’ attach- 
ment. Then the bond has become doubly 
strong. The new reciprocation, which is 
more than the old “thank you,” unites them 
indissolubly. They love him for his own sake 
and he treasures them for what they are to 
him. Thus does our heavenly Father knit us 
to Himself. We are no longer “children 
tossed to and fro” pleading for help in our 
emergencies, supplicating for the supply of 
our wants, and going from Him to make a 


98 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


selfish use of His generously bestowed gifts. 
We give Him pleasure by being altogether 
His. “The eyes of our understanding being 
enlightened, we know what is the riches of 
the glory of His inheritance in the saints” 
(Eph. i. 18). 

Because there is this mutual exchange 
of pleasure between the saint and the 
Sanctifier, there breaks upon us the evi- 
dent truth that the experience is not alone 
for those who have need of healing. It 
is for those who have no sickness at all, 


as well. Perhaps, not a few brethren, 
whose robust frames nd inexhaustible 


strength have rendered them immune 
from any demand to seek the Lord for 
healing, have thought that this blessed 
experience of the Lord’s care of the body 
is not to be theirs until they reach some 
point of physical decay. The reverse is 
true. The doctrine teaches us that con- 
stitutional strength just as much re- 
quires the touch of the Lord, as con- 
stitutional weakness. Indeed, as there is 
something beautiful in the sanctified life 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 99 
that walks with God, rejoices in God, 
though unscorched by the fires of affliction, 
so is it blessed to find those who are strong 
physically, and who have no natural neces- 
sity for seeking His life for the body, will- 
ingly exchanging their strength for His. 
And the motive is the same. If the weak 
ones must have the life of the Lord for their 
bodies, and this divinely permitted necessity, 
so employed, gives occasion for glorifying 
Him, more praise still is rendered Him, 
when the life of the strong ones‘is laid down 
and they become weak in Him, that 
in Him they may be made strong. 
This consecration guards them from that 
exultation in the flesh energy, which 
is the snare of so many devoted workers. 
They will not be tempted to go be- 
yond the Lord’s ordering. They may, if 
they will, treat themselves with impunity, 
but they are ju-t as susceptible to the warn- 
ing of the Spirit, when not to do, as are 
those who are held closely to the indwelling 
Lord, by the limitations which hedge in the 
physical man. They will not boasifully 


100 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 

abuse their bodies by excessive labor, indis- 
creet selection of food or drink, or needless 
exposures, any more than those who have 
been victims of these violations of the laws 
of health. Not that they must needs have 
the Spirit’s leading in these matters; but 
that they choose to have it, is their crown 
of rejoicing in the Lord. 

So, those who have been led captive to the 
Spirit’s behest, have beheld in the Word the 
divine provision for the bodies of the saints, 
have heard and obeyed the divine command, 
and have embraced the divine motive, are al- 
ready on the highway to glory. They are 
making real the presence and power of the 
Lord Jesus to be their abundant life. If 
when the great assize convenes, and we 
stand before our Lord, to receive of Him, 
according to that we have done, whether 
good or worthless, will it not be glorious to 
find that our union with Him for physical 
strength and length of days has added years 
to our earthly history? And there are mul- 
titudes of whom we know this to be true. 
Constitutionally, they died years ago, when 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. IOI 
in titter despair of life, they took His life 
for their very own. And they know, and we 
know of them, that if they were to break 
the precious bond that binds them to Him, 
by any act of unbelief, all the dread com- 
plications would return to claim their victim 
for the grave. Most significant is it, too, 
that those who have been healed by Him of 
some particular disorder, when, after a life 
of devotion to Him in this blessed relation, 
have been called to give up the fight of faith 
and came home to God, they have entered 
the grave, not through their old malady, 
but by another door. These facts prove to 
us, though we need none, that the conse- 
crated life is not only the most exalted life 
to live, but it more fully magnifies the Lord, 
because it adds days and years to our earthly 
service. A dying monarch cried in selfish 
desire to prolong her fast ebbing existence, 
“My kingdom for a moment of time.” 
God’s kings and priests have wrested from 
the grave, decades of time, which they will 
lay at His feet as trophies of the divine mo- 
tive, to glorify Him in their bodies. 


Chapter VI 
THE DIVINE METHOD. 


God superior to remedies. Christian Science 
the counterfeit of Divine Healing. Satan 
recognised. The Word the sword of the Spirit. 
The life of Jesus in the Word. Special con- 
secration. 


E have seen that the motive of those 
who treat disease as a thing of nature 
only, is to get well as soon as possible 

and by any means at hand. In discovering the 
divine method we must learn the same lesson 
as was there suggested. We are not able to 
comprehend God’s healing, so long as we 
cling to the ways of the flesh life. The two 
are as distinguishable as the mineral and 
vegetable kingdoms. The application of ex- 
ternal agencies, or the prescribing of drugs, 
internally administered, are not related in 
their action to the impartation of the Lord’s 
life to the believer. The methods of the two 
realms are dimerent. Our first postulate 
therefore in endeavoring to find the divine 
method, is that the divine view discloses 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. x0 


that disease is a spiritual condition, affect- 
ing the physical. When we touch the dis- 
ease through physical means, we apply them 
to the product only, not the source of the 
difficulty. 

Patching up physical rents, repairing 
physical breakdowns, allaying physical pain 
and arresting physical decay are worthy ef- 
forts, but they do not go to the root of the 
matter. If we may so put it, all the bene- 
fits which come to us from doctors and 
medicines are the good gifts of God, 
whereby He meets those who cannot 
reach out for the higher operation of 
healing. The perfect gift for healing is 
Himself, through Whom the heart of the 
disease is probed and the spiritual and su- 
pernatural agent of its working is overcome. 
So 

“God has His best things for those 
Who dare to stand the test. 


He has His second choice for those 
Who will not have His best.” 


God’s best is available to us only when He 
becomes the undivided whole of our life, 


104 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


What is holiness, but wholeness, and whole- 
ness is being “complete in Him.” This 
completeness comes through His being in 
us, the center and circumference of our be- 
ing for body as well as soul and spirit. The 
avenue of access to this condition is the way 
of the Word. “Thou wilt keep him in per- 
fect peace, whose mind is stayed upon Thee” 
(Isa. xxvi. 3). Peace is not spasmodic. It 
must be continuous in inflowing and unin- 
terrupted in manifestation. This staying of 
the mind is the all-comprehensive quality 
of the saint’s wholeness with God. If the 
mind is upon Him sometimes, almost all 
the time, the current is imperfect. So, the 
indwelling which means to us the suste- 
nance of the physical life and strength, is 
maintained, not by irregular contacts with 
our God, but unbroken union. The enthus- 
iastic Christian Scientist claims all this as 
his daily and hourly portion. He lives, ac- 
cording to his testimony, in a world of un- 
disturbed quiet. He is the model of rest- 
fulness. He declares that he now has what 
the church failed to give him, soul repose 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 105 


and physical health. We know some be- 
lievers in this way, who say that after years 
of suffering, Christian Science has brought 
them such release from pain and weakness, 
that they are scarcely conscious of having 
a body at all. The ground of their con- 
fidence is that they lose themselves in God. 
But the principle which the Christian 
Scientist calls God, is an impersonal thing, 
the All-prevailing Mind, which is in all men, 
and awaits its birth, not by the regeneration 
of the Holy Ghost, but the evolution of the 
inner man. If these deluded people, “giving 
heed to seducing spirits and doctrines which 
demons teach” (Translation of I. Tim. iv. 
1), can obtain a degree of peace of mind and 
vigor of body, which puts to shame the 
average experience of the disciples of the 
Lord Jesus, what may be the lot of those 
who will take the divine method of life and 
healing? If the concentration of the mind 
on the God of the Christian Scientist, the 
conception of the Buddhists, not a Father 
but a principle, will bring such results, have 
we not the most positive evidence that this 


106 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


counterfeit is the pledge of the existence 
and worth of the genuine, even divine life 
for the body through the Word? Indeed, 
our every experience with Christian Science 
proves to us that Satan has simulated God’s 
way of dealing with His dear ones, and pro- 
duced an article which rivals the truth, and 
blinds the eyes of the weak and wandering. 
The healings of Christian Science are not 
imaginative, they are not frauds. As real as 
life itself, they bring to the possessors of 
them such demonstrations of joy and power 
as surpass all that nominal Christianity pre- 
tends to. The critics of Christian Science 
are wide of the mark, when they assail this 
growing system with the weapons of ridicule 
or persecution. The former is a broken reed 
to those who know the experiences of its 
workings in their lives. The latter but 
feeds their ranks. The only manner of com- 
bating this monstrous evil, is to demon- 
strate the power of the Lord’s healing, 
through His Word and indwelling Spirit, 
and show that the genuine is according to 
the divine method. These are sifting days. 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 107 


God is calling the saints to try the spirits, 
whether they be of God. The present con- 
dition is fraught with a solemnity which ex- 
ceeds any other period. Dear Christians of 
sweet-tempered moods, of highly-gifted 
minds are being rapidly drawn into this 
vortex. Satan shapes his tools according to 
the materials he wishes to work. These 
victims of his power, who would shudder to 
think themselves under any other than the 
highest inspirations and most worthy 
methods of life, are as much subservient to 
his wiles as the gross sinner whose life is 
the expression of the most violent diabolical 
spirit. He who transforms himself “into an 
angel of light,” is surely able to counterfeit 
all the graces of the Christian life, produce 
imitations of the very fruit of the Spirit. 
We must not be surprised, therefore, if they 
who have entered this new cult, of which 
one of the promised teachers has recently 
declared, “I am firmly convinced ‘that Chris- 
tian Science is the faith once delivered to 
the saints,” are those who have departed 
from the Lord. The statement also made 


108 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 

that, “a movement that has given, within 
the last thirty-four years, over a million of 
people health, and happiness and more 
spiritual understanding of life, is repeating 
the works of our Lord, healing the sick, 
regenerating the depraved, interpreting the 
Holy Scriptures, and restoring the historic 
Episcopate of the Apostolic Church,” while 
sounding most plausible to the common 
reader, when tested by “the truth as the 
truth is in Jesus” becomes an alarming de- 
ception. Would that we might be able to 
warn God’s children everywhere of this 
predicted apostacy. 

These remarks, painful to make, arise 
from the allusion to the method of Christian 
Science in securing its results from absorp- 
tion of the mind in the All Prevading Mind. 
Let us who would know the truth that 
makes us free, realise that the divine method 
is here counterfeited. Truly appropriate 
was the remark of one who is well qualified 
to teach the blessed truth, “Get out of your 
sickness, and into God; and your sickness 
will get out of you.” Take again the prom- 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. TOO 
ise of Isa. xxvi. 3, and read it now, “Thou 
wilt keep him in perfect peace (and health) 
whose mind is stayed on Thee,” and we have 


_ the very fundamental principle of the divine 


method. The fact that a false practice can 
produce results that defy criticism, supplies 
unquestionable testimony that the true prac- 
tice must bring like, and legitimate fruitage. 

But, the reader will at once ask, How is 
it that Satan can be the author of such 
works, since it has been earlier asserted, that 
he is the cause of all sickness? Would he 
not be divided against himself, if he both 
Oppresses with disease and also makes well? 
So it would seem until we become ac- 
quainted with his method. Let it be first 
understood that the salient proposition of 
Christian Science is that there is no sin, no 
atonement for sin, no necessity for forgive- 
ness of sin as a natural consequence, and 
that there is no such being as the devil, and 
the solution of the problem becomes easier. 
If Satan is t!e author of disease, as the 
Word declares, and by persuading men and 
women that he is not, can bring them into 


I10 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


bondage to himself, may he not restrain 
in their case the malignant attacks of ill 
health? For we must know that the deepest 
device of the adversary, and that which best 
pleases him, is to persuade the weak that he 
has no existence. What made the life of the 
Lord Jesus so sorrowful, so heavy-hearted- 
Was it alone contact with suffering and op- 
positions of the gainsaying? Nay. He had 
to face Satan during the entire period of His 
blessed work, from the baptism to the cross. 
What rendered the ministry of St. Paul so 
full of trial? He himself declares that his 
“wrestling was not against flesh and blood, 
but against the principalities, against the 
powers, against the world-rulers of this 
darkness, against the spiritual hosts of 
wickedness in the heavenlies” (Eph. vi. 12, 
R. V.). Did he think lightly of the terrible 
forces of evil, when he thus describes them, 
using forms of speech of the most super- 
lative class, and then urges his Christian 
brethren to take the whole armor of God? 
Oh, the sin of it. Here are the “over a mil- 
lion of the people” healed through this false 





DIVINE LIFE FOR TATE BODY. II! 
religion, saying there is no devil; here are 
yet in our churches myriads of unstable 
Christians, who speak lightly of Satan, call 
him by jocular titles and laugh at the pos- 
sibility of his relation to them; here are 
numbers still, of well-meaning believers who 
say, “I do not know anything about the 
devil and I do not want to.” The while, 
the organised, systematised, compacted and 
disciplined forces of Satan are pressing 
through the “gates of hell,” to instigate to 
crime, to plague with disease, to blind with 
deceptions, and to rob the saints of God of 
their heritage by perverting the evident 
truth of the Word. 

We must insist, there can be no hold upon 
God for healing according to His method, 
unless there is the very clearest, most posi- 
tive recognition of, and antagonism to Satan 
and his hosts of demons. Any compromis- 
ing attitude must result in experiment and 
humiliating failure. We cannot be less firm 
than our Master, and the apostle who re- 
ceived His gospel by revelation of Jesus 
Christ, and as well other New Testament 


IIi2 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


writers. Let us be ever responsive to the 
Spirit’s promptings to see in the perplexing 
and trying experiences of daily life the per- 
sonal touch of our enemy and His; and let 
us be qualified with the resistance that will 
always cause us to triumph in our Redeemer 
and Saviour. 

And this unquestioning recognition of 
Satan as the source and operation of disease 
leads us away from the inherited and culti- 
vated way we have of trying to find some 
local reason for our infirmities or attacks. 
How natural the question, “Where did I get 
this cold? What caused this fever? How 
could I have exposed myself, or why did I?” 
And so on. When we stand on covenant 
ground, and obey the Word in following 
God’s method, we are liberated from these 
interrogations and surmisings. Not that 
we shall be defiant of all the laws of nature, 
or careless of the precautions of sanctified 
good sense. But we shall not pay tribute to 
Satan by ignoring his hand and malice is 
our sufferings. If it be said ‘that it 
is impossible not to regard local causes 





4 eee 





DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 113 
in our sickness, and that to charge 
Satan with intent in every pain or 
weakness we bear is puerile, we an- 
swer that we find by inquiring into 
our past, that the very causes which we 
now may assign for our illnesses have in the 
past been occasions OMutter_disregard. For 
instance, we catch a cold by sitting in—a— _ 
draft, we are prone to think that this alone 
is the ground of our affliction, but we prob- 
ably have been in just such a draft many 
times, and did not reap the same result. 
We are constantly facing danger on these 
lines, threatening health and limb, and es- 
caping any attack. If, when an attack does 
come, we think these conditions are alone 
responsible, do we stand clearly upon truth? 
Why, in other words, may we be indifferent 
to sundry causes, which we find are the basis © 
of illness in other lives ; and finally, when on 
some unfortunate turn in our affairs we are 
in the same category, shall we say that the 
causes are to blame? There is no solution 
of these conflicting facts of experience apart 
from the recognition of a force that employs 


IIl4 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


a change of atmosphere once, where the 
same change has been met many times 
without serious products, that at one time 
renders indigestible or irritating what many 
times has been eaten with impunity, that 
evolves accident out of the merest slip, wher- 
as one has been accustomed to the largest 
freedom of action in similar environments. 
This view of our common experience may 
not appeal to those who are habituaily trac- 
ing to second causes their sufferings, but it 
is in accord with the Word of God to hold 
Satan accountable for all that invades the 
bodies of His redeemed ones. We are not 
speaking here for those who will not ac- 
knowledge the Lord Jesus as Sovereign in 
their lives. The world is welcome to its 
philosophy and second causes. But the child- 
ren of the King are wasting precious time, 
going all around the truth and submitting 
to the deception of the devil, when they 
habituate themselves to the practice of ask- 
ing the source of their sicknesses, and wor- 
rying that they were so foolish as to expose 
themselves and betray their folly. This is 


_ . 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 11g 


not liberty. Let the life be held under the 
surveillance of the Holy Ghost. Let what 
we eat or drink, do or be, rest entirely upon 
the momentary guidance which the Word 
enjoins, and then if attacks come, trace them 
to their true source, and claim victory from 
the Conqueror, and give to the winds our 
fears and solicitudes. This is freedom. For 


this is according to God’s method. But, oh, 


do let us remember that we can occupy 
this exalted ground of safety only by re- 
garding “all the power of the enemy” as 
well as claiming deliverance from our con- 
quering Lord. And so we reiterate our 
former statement, all disease originates in 


some spiritual condition, which renders pos- .\ 


sible the interference of Satan as its author 
and operator. Get the spiritual life in har- 
mony with God’s life, hold it there, and face 
the first symptom of disease as the advance 
guard of the enemy’s forces, and the battle 
becomes the Lord’s. Frit away the precious 
time in self-centering, self-commiseration, 
self-reproach, and the advantage gained will 
make the power of the adversary the more 


116 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


difficult to withstand. Let us, therefore, be 
not ignorant of his devices, that no ad- 
vantage be gained over us by Satan (II. 
Corsniiihay. 

The Word of God, then, is our only and 
safe guide. Not that intepretation of the 
Word which while dismissing all material , 
things from the realm of human conscious- 
ness, relegates disease to the sphere of noth- 
ingness, but the Word as our God has given 
it to us; the testimony that all have sinned 
and come short of the glory of God; that 
there is no salvation in any other than in 
the Lord who was crucified, who gave Him- 
self for us that He might redeem us from 
this present evil world; that instead of ig- 
noring disease labels it by its true designa- 
tion and credits it to its real author; that 
insists that as Christ died for our sins, He 
also rose again for our justification, and that 
if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus 
from the dead dwell in us, He that raised 
up Christ from the dead shall also quicken 
our mortal bodies, by His Spirit that dwel- 
leth in us. As Jesus made the Word the 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 117 


rule of His destiny, constantly meeting some 
fact of experience, or act of service by the 


familiar “It is written,’ even unto the end 
of His matchless life, so may we touch at 
every corner of our humble existence, the 
purpose of God concerning ourselves. For 
that which was written of Jesus, in the line 
of conflict and conquest, is to be fulfilled 
in us, by His present indwelling and resur- 
rection life. 

And the Word must be to us the very 
mind and life of God. The mystery of its 
power lies in the well-known, but meagrely 
comprehended sentence, ‘“‘man shall not live 
by bread alone, but by every Word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. iv. 
4). That He has transferred His own life 
to that Word, we cannot for a moment 
doubt. Thus it becomes life to us even as 
He is life. The divine method is here de- 
fined with no uncertain announcement. Let 
us be sure that if it is to us only a history, 
a code of ethics, a bundle of dogmas, it must 
fail to meet our need. Bread is for incorp- 
oration. So is the Word. It will not feed 


118 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 

the intellect. Those who submit it to the 
tests of human speculation or analysis, will 
find it passive in their hands. It will not 
resist them, but as well, it will yield 
them no sweetness or strength. Blessed 
secret! The simple ones, who are hungry, 
find it food. They cannot tell how its 
wholesome invigoration enters into their 
being. They are conscious only of this, that 
the Word becomes to them all He claims 
for it, when they accept the divine method 
of its assimilation. It baffles the worldly- 
wise; it lights, cheers, revives and satisfies 
God’s humble and obedient children. 

And we learn, too, that its power for us, 
and in us, is according to our retaining it. 
“If my words abide in you. Let the Word 
of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom” 
(John xv. 7; Col. iii. 16). How many dear 
saints of God could rise and tell us that 
failure began more than once in their life 
of faith when the realisation of the indwell- 
ing Word became intermittent! No more 
surely must we have nourishment of the 
bread that He has ordained for bodily ap- 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 119 


petite than does this Bread, Himself, in His 
Word, make itself necessary to our being. 
Aye, more than even this. It becomes the 
very atmosphere we breathe. Just as the 
atmosphere is freighted with vitalising ele- 
ments that form a large share of the up- 
building processes, sowe learn to depend up- 
on the Word as the air of life inhaled. This 
will not appeal to all. Some, no doubt, will 
question the possibility of this experience. 
But they who have been made obedient to 
the will of God know the truth. While they 
come to the Word and find in it choice 
morsels for life sustaining, they also dis- 
cover that to be in company with the Word, 
simply breathing in its spirit while restfully 
receiving its revealings, is to obtain life, 
not alone for the spiritual nature, but the 
physical. 

Only by this real, continuous and joyous 
fellowship with Him in the Word, and incor- 
poration of the Word in us, can we expect 
to meet successfully the adversary, of whom 
we have been speaking. Recall that in Eph- 
esians vi. the apostle after urging the taking 


120 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


of the shield of faith in connection with the 
whole armor of God, adds “‘and take the 
sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of 
God.” As the warfare is persistent, our de- 
fence must be. But when we have acquired 
the ability to defend ourselves with the 
shield of faith, He qualifies us to become 
aggressive. In no phase of Christian exper- 
ience is the reality of Satan so clear, and the 
need for advance conquest so real as with 
those who take the Lord for their body. 
The demon in the synagogue of Capernaum 
cried to Jesus, “let us alone.” That is all 
that Satan and his hosts of evil ones want. 
To ply their wickedness unmolested and un- 
noticed is the fullest measure of advantage 
they can claim. But Jesus could not let 
_them alone. He had been consecrated to 
the work of healing all those who were op- 
pressed with the devil. Is it not because the 
church has let him alone so long, that there 
is so little recognition of him in all the 
manifestations of evil with which the sad 
world is burdened? And we, too, like our 
Lord, when standing in the way of God’s 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 121 


method for life impartation, must be antag- 
onistic. We cannot let him alone. When 
we are filled with the Spirit and permeated 
with the Word, we must be more than de- 
fensive. Like little David we meet this Go- 
liath with but a simple weapon. It will not 
stand the test of philosophical standards, 
any more than the five pebbles from the 
brook answered the judgment of the war- 
riors of David’s time. As Gideon rushed in- 
to the hosts of the Midianites, with his puny 
three hundred and their broken pitchers and 
glaring torches, to rout the enemies of the 
Lord’s people,so our weapons are not carnal 
because the warfare is not against flesh and 
blood. Hence, we find the Word alone is 
the sword of the Spirit, by which we invade 
the stronghold of the evil one and prove 
the pledge of our Captain, “I give you power 
over all the power of the enemy.” A quaint 
remark was made by a young man in a Bible 
class recently. “We are told that if we resist 
the devil, he will flee from us; but the most 
of us find that if we try to do so, he will go 
for us.” And so he does, truly. Many a 


I22 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


brave man has fallen in the fight because he 
has not seen the mystery beneath this re- 
pulse. If we resist him in our own strength, 
if the battle is ours instead of God’s, if the 
weapons of our warfare are not from the 
armory of God, then we shall meet defeat. 
And our watchful Lord allows us to be 
“gone for” by the devil in our first lessons 
of conquering, to teach us the all needful 
truth that victory comes only through our 
helplessness, our utter dependence upon 
Him, and our use of the sword of the 
Spirit. So, then, the divine method reveals 
that we shall obtain liberty, “wax valiant in 
fight, turn to flight the armies of the aliens” 
alone by the most disciplined accord with 
the purpose of God. 

The divine method for the impartation of 
physical life requires a special consecration. 
We know the meaning of this. We have 
realised its import in other lines. It con- 
veys a clear sense of the necessity for a full 
surrender of all our being to Him. He 
would have us look at every feature of the 
case. We are not to rush into this life un- 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 123 


bidden or unprepared. Too many have 
erred and been plunged into doubt by an 
unadvised experimenting. If we still regard 
our bodies as ours, as under constitutional 
conditions, requiring the aids and props and 
restoratives of the world, we shall simply 
make shipwreck of our faith. The body by 
this consecration is no longer a purely 
mechanical system, which is to be treated 
by mechanical means, but the temple of the 
Holy Ghost, whose sovereignty insures a 
spiritual supply for physical needs. We can- 
not debate this with those who do not see 
the union of the spiritual and physical in 
the Christian life. It once seemed like 
folly to us all; and perhaps those of us who 
have most deeply learned the sweet mystery 
were at one time most opposed to the teach- 
ing. But we know what we say, because He 
has made it truth to us. He has interpreted 
to us the full significance of Romans viil. 
2, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus hath made me free from the law of 
sin and death.” This freedom being recog- 
nised and embraced, there is no longer any 


I24 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


need of adapting the life to the old law. 
But we do not reach this result of convic- 
tion “on the wing.” It comes only through 
the most deep and soulful contemplation of 
His purpose and provision. If there be any 
question of the Lord’s will or supply; if 
there be any reservation that mingles doubt 
with faith, we do well to wait until the sky 
is clear. When we are sure His promises 
in this matter are for us, and that He must 
keep His word, because He cannot fail; 
when we take Him in His entirety, and give 
ourselves to Him with unqualified consecra- 
tion, the covenant is fixed. We have met 
the divine method. 


Chapter VIII 
THE DIVINE METHOD (Concluded.) 


Faith. It is the faith of God. Appropriation. 
Strength out of weakness. The prayer life. 
Make time for prayer. Sincerity in waiting upon 
God. Stillness. Dying with Jesus. The praise 
life. 


NOTHER and important feature of 
A the divine method of impartation of 

life is faith. It is the open door to 
salvation. “Whosoever shall call upon the 
name of the Lord shall be saved.” It is the 
quality of the spiritual life. “Without faith 
it is impossible to please Him” (Heb. xi. 6). 
It was the standard of fitness for the recep- 
tion of our Lord’s healing power in His 
ministry of healing in the days of His flesh. 
“Believe ye that I am able to do this?” 
(Matt. ix. 28). “If thou canst believe, all 
things are possible to him that believeth” 
(Mark ix. 23). We do not require to multi- 
ply references. The truth will be apparent 
to all who have known in any degree the 


126 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


triumphs of faith in other lines of Christian 


experience. 


“Faith is the grasping of Almighty power; 

The hand of man laid on the arm of God:— 
The grand and blessed hour 

In which the things impossible to me 

Become the possible, O Lord, through Thee.” 


The essential point of observation is that 
the faith which we are to exercise with a 
view to receiving divine life for the body 1s, 
that it is not a residuum of faith left over 
from belief in other fields of conquest. This 
faith is a distinctive gift. It comes only to 
those who seek it for this special end. To 
the clearer comprehension of our position 
let us remark that faith for salvation is 
the property of all men. The work of the 
Holy Ghost in the world today is to con- 
vince the world of sin, to persuade men 
of their need of a Saviour, to regenerate 
them. No man may say, “I have not faith 
to accept Christ as my Redeemer.” He has 
that faith within his grasp, as free as the 
air he breathes. The Spirit of God is conse- 
crated to this work. And when the seeker 


ae he ee 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 127 


for truth simply obeys God, is willing to do 
the will of God (John vii. 17), the faith is 
his. When the Lord Jesus declared, “No 
man can come to me, except the Father 
which hath sent me draw him” (John vi. 
44), He did not imply an eclectic selection 
of souls which should be the recipients of 
salvation,.while others could not be saved, 
though they might yearn with all their 
hearts for the boon of life. The very con- 
trary is true. He conveyed the unmistak- 
able teaching that men could not come to 
Him in their own strength, nor could they 
understand Him in their own wisdom. And 
to this agrees I. Cor. ii. 14, “The natural 
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit 
of God, and he cannot know them, for they 
are spiritually discerned.” Therefore, who- 
soever will be led of the Spirit in the very 
elements of the truth of salvation will there- 
by call into action the very faith that saves. 

But we are to discover that the faith for 
triumph in the divine life is a particular 
provision for the believer who has known 
the power of the faith that saves. The ex 


128 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 

hortation of the Lord Jesus to the disciples 
in Mark xi. 22 may read, ‘‘Have the faith 
of God.” They are to seek a faith that God 
possesses and exercises. So the father of the 
lunatic boy cries, after making the best use 
of the faith he already has, “Help Thou 
mine unbelief.” St. Paul describes the faith 
by which He lives the life in the flesh, as 
“the faith of Christ” (Gal. ii. 20). In 
Philippians 11. 9, he uses the same phrase, 
“the faith of Christ,’ as though this faith 
were something especially imparted. He de- 
fines one aspect of the fruit of the Spirit as 
“faith” (Gal. v. 22, 23), while among the 
gifts of the Spirit, faith is mentioned in I. 
Cor. xii. 9. Faith, then, is a divine quality 
and is divinely imparted to those who will 
to reach out to the divine method. It may 
seem incongruous that God should have 
faith as an attribute of the Deity. And yet 
is it not told us in connection with the great 
faith chapter of Romans, the fourth, that 
“God calleth those things which be not, as 
though they were?” And some of us have 
Leen led to so interpret Hebrews xi. 3, 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 129 
“Through faith we understand that the 
worlds were framed by the Word of God, so 
that things which are seen were not made of 
things which do appear.” ‘The faith has not 
relation to our understanding of creation, 
but creation itself. That is, when God made 
the world, it was by an act of faith. All 
His mighty power was subservient to this 
capacity of the Deity to believe all things. 
There is a wonderful unfolding of His char- 
acter in this. It is seen in the earthly life 
of our Lord, when He so frequently rebuked 
His disciples for their unbelief. Faith to 
Him was a divine property. It was a part 
of God’s own being. To fall short of it was 
to be out of touch with God. He always 
believed. To find others in doubt grieved 
Him. So the efficiency of His life in the 
flesh for us is demonstrated by our becom- 
ing heirs of the same faith that made His 
life so free from solicitude. And as Jesus 
received His faith from the Father, that He 
might thereby stand as our examplar,so now 
He imparts to us the faith that is in Him- 
self, Can we not see that faith, therefore, is 


130 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


not a purely human act, that it cannot meet 
God if it spring from the heart of man? So 
to speak, we believe only as we put ourselves 
into communication with Him for the in- 
filling of faith which is His province to 
bestow. May the truth become very real to 
us. And may we cease our vain struggling 
to attain unto faith’s glorious achievements, 
and simply take the attitude of receptivity. 
Keep the pipes open that the flow of the 
Spirit’s power in us may not be obstructed. 
Abandon the old method of friction for re- 
sult, and be still, expectant for the infilling 
of the faith that “is the substance of things 
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” 

This faith which we recognize as a divine 
gift, and not the product of inner purpose 
and activity, ceases its restless cravings for 
God’s bounties. It ceases pulling at God’s 
mercy strings like an impatient child. It 
responds to the divine provision, “All things 
are yours,” and with unquestioning simplic- 
ity appropriates its elected rights. Like 
Hannah, when once the promise of God be- 
comes a revealed fact, its “countenance is no 


_ is 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 131 


more sad.” It gets to the place where it can 
take God at His word, no matter what the 
feelings, or sight, or Satan may interpose. 
It is indeed “a crowned queen.” It rises on 
the wings of possibility and soars above all 
the dark surmisings of questioning unbelief. 
It has taken God for all He can be, and 
since He has promised to be all, it is victor. 
Having changed its attitude from self-en- 
ergy to receptivity of the divine gift, striv- 
ings in prayer are no longer desperate wrest- 
lings with God for coveted blessings, but 
His might inworking. Is not this infinitely 
better than the old way of pleading and 
agonising? Aye, as much better as is that 
of the bride, who, dwelling in the heart of 
her husband, has no want, no wish ungrati- 
fied, as compared with the weary servant, 
who labors to meet the requirements of his 
master’s commands, but knows not his 
master’s will. 

And the life of appropriation, through 
divinely imparted gift of faith, becomes one 
of noiseless potency. “There is a quiet, 
normal receiving of divine life for our phys- 


132 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 
‘cal frame which becomes as natural as 
breathing, and almost as spontaneous. It is 
not mere ccnstitutional strength. It comes 
from God, but it comes through the opera- 
tion of a spiritual law into which we may 
rise, and through which we can appropriate 
supernatural strength from our living Lord 
just as freely as we take the oxygen from 


the air and absorb the sunshine from the . 


sky.” Because the spirit which dwells in 
us is the giver of the faith by which we 
appropriate this life, His presence is the 
constant assurance of our rectitude with 
God. We are not rash, nor self-dominated. 
It is blessed surrender. Ah, it is so free 
from self-seeking, that there come times 
when it would almost seem more precious 
to suffer than be delivered, if only we could 
see that the will of God is so. Such is the 
sweetness of our capacity to the obedience 
of Christ. 

Linked with this experience of oneness 
with Him, is the consciousness of our utter 
insufficiency, even for the daily demands. 
One dear saint has put it in these words, 


a. 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY, 183 


“He does love to take an utterly helpless 
body and charge every artery, vein and nerve 
with His strength. He does not take our 
weak bodies to make them strong; neither 
does He give to our stewardship a bundle of 
His strength. He would take up His abode 
in my flesh, and through the same exercise 
Himself, for He is not only strong but 
strength. And we cease to measure our 
service by our strength, with continual care 
for our bodies; but with an abandonment to 
Him, which human wisdom names reckless- 
ness, we seek only to know His will and we 
obey. He is our strength, and we wait to be 
sent by Him. We have no might against 
the great company of enemies that cometh 
against us—physically, mentally and spiritu- 
ally—neither know we what to do, but our 
eyes are upon Him. A picture of perfect 
helplessness, we stand before Him, and go 
forth with Him to sure and eternal victories. 
Isn’t it a pity that we are so strong? Isn’t 
it a pity we are so unwilling to be helpless? 
For our weakness is required for the display 
of His strength. His strength is made per- 


134 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


fect in weakness, and the more helpless we 


are, the more He is able to accomplish 
through us. But our strength will not work 
with His; the one is crumbling clay, while 
the other is eternal Rock. It is folly, ter- 
rible folly, to supplement Him in any way 
with ourselves, and can bring only defeat, 
shame and sin.” In Rotherham’s transla- 
tion of James v. 15, we read “The prayer of 
faith shall save the exhausted one.” 

So, jubilant faith knows no margin where 
the fine lines of human discrimination 
blend with the challenge of God to believe 
all things. And like Him who is its Author 
and Finisher, it “calls those things which 
be not as though they were.” This faith can 
“keep on believing” though every evidence 
which is given is but to contradict its ex- 
pectation. “It staggers not through unbe- 
lief.” Its beautiful type is the Syro-Phene- 
cian. woman, who knowing her need and the 
power of the Lord to heal her daughter, con- 
quered the heartlessness of the disciple and 
the seeming indifference of the Master, car- 
rying away not only blessing of healing, but 


i 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 135 


a benediction which has rested upon her 
memory for all ages. This faith, let us again 
remark, is not a human product. If it were 
the result of intense and persistent asking 
and demanding on our part, the whole as- 
pect of the question would assume a differ- 
ent form. But it is God’s own bestowment, 
and can only be exercised in God’s way. 
Therefore, let us be sure that we have God’s 
faith ere we assume to seek the fruitage here 
discovered. We shall know that it is of God 
when we have no controversy with Him, 
“Te that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, 
driven with the wind and tossed. Let not 
that man think that he shall receive any- 
thing of the Lord” (James i. 6,7). This faith 
is marked by perfect rest. It cannot for an 
instant compromise with doubt. Its only re- 
course in any moment of temptation to ques- 
tion God, is to call upon the name of Jesus 
as the means of resistance of Satan’s wiles. 
This experience, which will come to every 
believer who will follow the divine method, 
is an example of what is meant by “taking 
the shield of faith, wherewith we shall be 


136 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


able to quench all the fiery darts of the 
wicked one” (Eph. vi. 16). 

Prayer, next claims our notice as a part of 
the divine method. We know perfectly well 
that our Father is fully acquainted with our 
needs. He requires no hint from us of our 
demands on His compassion and power. But 
“He that searcheth the reins and hearts” 
has ordained that we should present our 
supplications to Him. In seeking the 
knowledge of the divine method for impar- 
tation of divine life for the body, we do well 
to place ourselves as learners in the school 
of prayer. Much of our former habits in 
this phase of Christian practice must needs 
be refashioned. “Prayer is not our com- 
pelling God’s reluctance, but laying hold of 
God’s willingness.” So long as we feel God 
has something which we must wrench from 
Him by the very might of our importunity, 
so long will there be confusion and im- 
potence. The principles of this method are 
clearly defined in John xv. 7, “If ye abide in 
Me and My Words abide in you, ye shall ask 
what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 137 
This will is not self-will, self-centered, self- 
operating. It is His will breathed into us, 
_and then breathed by us unto Him. Won- 
derful mystery! “The Spirit also helpeth 
our infirmity, for we know not how to pray 
as we ought” (Romans viii. 26). When this 
becomes true of us, when we are willing to 
confess to Him that we know not how to 
pray,and that we shall prayonly as He prays 
in us, we shall ask what we will, because His 
will is our will. We shall not ask obedient 
to some sudden caprice of self-seeking, or 
even high-bounding zeal for others. But the 
life will prepare us to ask for just what the 
Father is preparing to give. And the abid- 
ing in the Lord Jesus is the pledge of our 
not abiding in any other. We cannot abide 
in Him and dwell in doubt of His will; in 
fear of the emergencies of life, or of the 
Satanic influences that press into our daily 
experiences ; nor may we indulge the spirit 
of the world, or the clamorings of the unsat- 
isfied self within us. Abiding in Him, as in 
the center of the flame, where, we are told, 
there is perfect rest, we have freedom from 


138 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


bondage, and unto fruitfulness. Then, too, 
His Word abiding in us is not an occasional 
passage snatched up and applied to our 
needs in some emergency. It is a constant. 
appropriation, through a life of prayer. We 
see thus, that the prayer life is intimately 
related to the impartation of divine life for 
the body. It is through this means that the 
Word becomes life to us; as much life as the 
bread we eat becomes in its way a means of 
physical nourishment. 

We can never know the power of the 
prayer life unless we resolutely make time 
for it. If service is more important to us 
than waiting upon God for daily strength, 
we shall be found to undertake much in our 
own wisdom and flesh energy, and there can 
be no result from such a habit of life but 
humiliating failure. The wheels of activity 
may revolve with commendable rapidity. 
We may seem to men to be a most faithful 
ministrant. But angels and the Lord Him- 
self will witness the hollowness of our con- 
secration. How bitterly have many dear ser- 
vants of the Most High learned this lesson. 





DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 139 


And in most cases, by the exhaustion of 
their physical powers in the very work they 
have loved and maintained. Only when He 
could thus get them still, were they in touch 
with Him for the deeper teaching, they 
might have known many years before, but 
they would not cease their untiring round of 
pleasure. How true is the remark, “Man is 
all for quantity; God is all for quality.” 
Witness the extensive fabrics of Christian 
enterprise everywhere; the multiplicity of 
agencies for reaching the unchurched! All so 
noble in their way, and yet how do the tired 
workers in these whirling demands of guilds, 
clubs, societies, penny funds, and what not, 
need the very life of God for their bodies, 
and know not that their very work for Him, 
with its exacting demands of time cheats 
them out of their heritage! They cannot 
find time, they say, for prayer. We agree 
witn them. Time for prayer is not to be 
found. Satan is too shrewd to let time lie 
around to be so easily picked up. It must be 
made. “What is heaviest will weigh heav- 
iest.” Something must be sacrificed if we 


140 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


are to be Scripturally environed by the life 
of prayer. 
“God never asks of us such active service 
As leaves no time for resting at His feet. 
The waiting time of expectation 
He oftener counts a service more complete.” 

This is pre-eminently true of those who 
would take divine life for their bodies. How 
many times do those who have been led out 
upon this line discover to their humiliation, 
that some errand of mercy, which they have 
chosen to perform regardless of His will for 
them, has shut them out of a much needed 
protection from, Satan’s attacks! How subtle 
is the adversary! He is able to make the 
very things by which we think to magnify 
our Lord the snare by which our feet are 
taken. So our immunity lies in being sure 
that God has His time with us, ere we give 
our time to Him. Invalids will spend hours a 
day in their sun-baths and “constitutionals” 
They do not begrudge the time required in 
these treatments if only they may recover. 
Shall we be less responsive to our Father’s 
call to bathe in the light of His presence, to 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY, 141 


walk there with Him in conscious fellowship 
and to have as the consequence the cleansing 
of the blood of His Son, efficacious for sick- 
ness and weakness as well as for sin? (I. 
John i. 7). We who would be filled with “all 
the fulness of God” cannot relegate our 
prayer seasons to hasty morning calls upon 
our Father, or a short “good-night” to Him 
as we close a day full of absorptions, distrac- 
tions and cares. We may no longer “pray 
along the street” to atone for the loss of 
communion in the closet. There will be a 
place in the life, to be sure, for joyous out- 
bursts, and the precious “little talks with 
Jesus” by the way. But we must make time 
to be with God, to the exclusion of all else, 
or the divine life will leak out; and we shall 
pass into physical bankruptcy. And this 
phase of our dependence upon Him points to 
a reformation of our reading seasons and 
habits. How much time shall we take, and 
what books shali we read? The bond which 
exacts our waiting upon God’s answers this 
question. We cannot, as we once did, spend 
hours in reading that which is purely enter- 


142 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


taining. The measure with which we draw 
from these old fountains of pleasure will in- 
dicate the degree of our leanness. That 
which does not contribute to make us “work- 
men that need not to be ashamed, rightly 
living the word of truth,’ cannot be ad- 
mitted into the field of our literary enjoy- 
ments. The Spirit is very jealous in this 
matter. Some of us know from deep and 
painful experience that we may no longer 
choose the books we may read, or elect the 
time for this occupation, to the hindering of 
the waiting upon Him, which now becomes 
so vital to us. If this may seem bondage 
to those who have been accustomed to self- 
will in these matters, we can only reply that 
the compensation is so rich, as to render us 
grateful, indeed, that He is willing thus to 
reveal His will in us. The sacrifice of part- 
ing from our loved literature has been more 
than made up in the consciousness of His 
pleasure, and His living through us. 

And, we must not only make time to be 
with God, but our coming to God is to be 
marked by intensity. Need we say that 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 143 


much of prayer is vain repetition? If there 
is no conscious touch with Him spiritually, 
how can we expect to receive from Him 
physical life? Let us refresh our minds by 
a commentary on Jer. xxix. 11-13. Our lov- 
ing Father first assures us of His good will 
for us and His purpose to translate our pres- 
ent exigency into the very ground for the 
display of His power. “I know the thoughts 
that I think toward you, thoughts of peace, 
and not of evil, to give you latter end and 
hope.” 
only all future time but the vital present, 
He then declares the condition of obtaining 


This defined, which embraces not 


the promised benediction. ‘Ye shall call 
upon Me, and ye shall go and pray unto Me, 
and I will harken unto you. And ye shall 
seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search 
for Me with all your heart.” Let us confess 
that much of our coming to God is marked 
by half-heartedness. We are not sincere with 
Him. We have become so accustomed to 
terms and definitions, that only the frame- 
work of prayer abides. The power is want- 
ing. But let the soul be all alive to know 


144 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 
Him, let the transitory things of this life 
take their proper place, and we shall come to 
Him in deed and in truth. Perhaps there is 
no exhortation in the entire Word so forcible 
as Heb. xi. 6, “He that cometh to God must 
believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder 
of them that diligently seek Him.” Be- 
loved, God insists that if we would exper- 
ience His life, we must first know His per- 
sonality. There can be no bestowment of 
the former, while the latter is but a vague 
thing. Therefore fet us “follow on to know 
the Lord” (Hosea vi. 3). If it is healing 
we need, let that go, until we get God. And 
having Him, we shall have all that He has 
to confer. Beware of beginning at the 
wrong end of the divine method of life im- 
partation. ‘“‘Beholding Him as in a glass 
(the Word) we are changed into the same 
image,” when we come “with open face,” 
that is, downright sincerity. Let us perse- 
vere in prayer, for that He has commanded ; 
but let us know as well that we are holding 
on to nothingness unless we “believe that 
He is.” 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY, 145 


Stillness in prayer aids us in making God 
real to us, It is not easy to shut out the 
clamoring world, the claims of self interest, 
or even the laudable things of our service for 
Him. But He will help us in this. He 
Himeelf is still. And He is never ina hurry. 
A proper translation of Psalm xxvii. 14, in- 
stead of “Wait on the Lord,” is “Tarry thou 
the Lord’s leisure.” Have we not often 
heard Him call to us, “Be still and know 
that Iam God?” When we “dwell deep” it 
is in stillness. As the most holy place was 
the very center of Israel’s life, and marked 
by a sacred hush, so the inner life with God 
insures stillness. And through stillness does 
He impart Himself to us. “Their strength 
is to sit still” (Isa. xxx. 7). Mary at Jesus’ 
feet is the portraiture of the saints always, 
who have chosen that good part which shall 
not be taken away from them. Has He not 
raised us up and made us sit with Him in 
the heavenlies? (Eph. ii. 6). Here is the 
attitude of restfulness, of stillness. The 
angels are permitted to stand in the pre- 
sence of the Lord. We His beloved ait 


146 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


down. The Martha life of bustling energy 
may have its place in the daily economy, but 
stillness such as Mary observed as she list- 
ened to Jesus becomes those of us who would 
acquire the impartation of His own life. 
Cruel ag well as false was the criticism of 
a2 noble Christian minister, who, when refer- 
ring to the precious truth we are studying, 
named it “the laziness of faith.” The best 
answer to that charge is that the energetic 
believers, who have known the burden of 
relentless demands in the Lord’s service, be- 
cause they have held themselves ready unto 
every good work, are they who now know the 
better portion of being at rest from all their 
“hard bondage wherein they were made to 
serve” (Isa. xiv. 3). Surely, “in quietness and 
confidence” shall be the strength of those 
who will manifest the life of the Lord Jesus 
in their mortal flesh. It may be some have 
perverted the doctrine and brought scandal 
upon the church by neglecting the plain 
duties of their calling. This should not in- 
terfere with our meeting the Lord in the at- 
titude He has ordered. Undoubtedly, if we 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY, 147 


learn to wait upon Him in stillness, we shall 
not only receive His life, but we shall have 
such experience of His indwelling and vi- 
tality as will press us into a service that may 
truly be to His praise. The indweling Spirit 
will not permit those who are responsive to 
His quickening, in anywise tomakevoid the 
divine method. 

Allied to this stillness, that is willing to 
hush the self life in order to know the mind 
of God, is that of “dying with Jesus.” We 
have already remarked that in the physical 
economy the death processes are as import- 
ant as the life processes. ‘T'o interrupt the 
one is as fatal to life as to impede the other. 
We may now contemplate the relation of this 
natural law to the impartation of the divine 
life to the believer. Let us declare the 
doing of that will to be His meat and drink. 
(John iv. 34). His will was lost in His 
Father's (John vi. 38). The highest en- 
comium He could set upon His life was 
veiced in the humble confession, “I do al- 
ways those things that please Him” (John 
viii. 29). So greatly does this aspect of the 


148 DIVINE LIFE FNR THE BODY. 


Lord’s consecration impress the apostle, that 
he says in Romans xy. 3, “Even Christ 
pleased not Himself.” So the ideal Chris- 
tian life is to St. Paul a dying with Jesus 
from all self will. But Jesus died to yet 
more. How mysterious to us, from the lips 
of Elim who made the worlds, “The Son can 
do nothing of Himself” (John v. 19). Here 
is a dying to self sufficiency, a willingness 
that God should be all, and He but a pliant 
instrument in the Fathers hand. How 
beautifully this was fulfilled by Him is best 
defined in Heb. v. 8, “Though He were a 
Son, yet learned he obedience by the things 
which he suffered.” His whole ministry 
was a suffering; He endured such solitariness 
as no man ever knew, which only the long 
nights in prayer mad¢ up to Him; His every 
contact with vile men was a process of dy- 
ing, because it spoke of His willing helpless- 
ness; the very obtiuseness of His chosen 
friends was a pain to Him; and undoubtedly 
each work of mercy entailed a loss of 
strength which comipelJed His seeking a re- 
newal of the Spirit's might. And at last, 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 149 


when His accusers and foes would press up- 
on Him, and one of His own would seek to 
defend Him, He protests that if He willed 
He would call unto His Father and He 
would presently send for His vindication 
and deliverance, more than twelve legions 
of angels. The fact that He refused to avail 
Himself of this only too willing succor, is 
proof to us of His dying then to all self pro- 
tection. And we are constrained to believe 
that His whole life was one of incessant op- 
position from demons, who knew Him and 
would array themselves against Him. If we 
understand aright that fearful moment, 
when on the cross He cried out, “My God, 
My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” it 
was when the forces of evil in the heaven- 
lies, so graphically described in Ephesians 
vi. crowded upon Him, (having failed in 
the Garden), to effect if it were possible a 
humiliation which should make void His 
perfect life. But thank God, through that 
very death, He overcame him who had the 
power of death (Heb. 11. 14). 

Such then, are some of the features of the 


150 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


death life of Jesus to which undoubtedly 
St. Paul refers when he delineates his calling - 
and that of all who will walk in the way, as, 
the essential to having manifested in the 
body the resurrected life of Jesus. Are we 
able to bear this teaching? Do we wonder 
that so few are healed, compared with the 
number that exult in the cures of Christian 
Science? This system of sublimated self 
hood, of the sufficiency of the ego, flaunts 
its triumphs before the world, while the lit- 
tle flock of believers who contend for the 
truth “as the truth is in Jesus” is compar- 
atively few in numbers and weak in testi- 
mony. But can we not see the secret? God 
waits for those who will die with Jesus, in 
order that Jesus may live in them. Who 
will die to self seeking, self will, self com- 
miseration? Be so dead that praise cannot 
elevate and censure cannot pain? Who will 
be eo compleetly lost in the will and pleas- 
ure of God that no matter how that will may 
be expressed it will always be the sweetest 
will to do or bear? Who, like Jesus, will 
empty themselves and become obedient to 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 151 


the death of the cross? Who will accept the 
divine call to face and overcome in the 
strength and bravery of the Spirit of God, 
the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the 
heavenlies, and on earth? Such are fit sub- 
ects for the reception of the life of Jesus 
in their mortal flesh. We do not say that 
our gracious Father may not grant healing 
to many that simply cry out in importunity. 
He will work in various ways to make His 
praise to be known. But we are persuaded 
that many have failed to receive healing be- 
cause the death processes have not corres- 
ponded with the measure of the life proces- 
ses which the needs of the body have de- 
manded. Let us note God’s happy balanc- 
ing of the two processes in Philippians two. 
After St. Paul has described the humiliation 
of the Lord Jesus, personally assumed, he 
then declares, “Wherefore, God also hath 
highly exalted him.” So if we attend to the 
death processes, He will see that the life pro- 
cesses are made operative in us. All we have 
to do is to die with Jesus, to die with Jesus’ 
willingness, Jesus’ completeness, and with 


152 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


Jesus’ sweetness, and the inflowing of the 
life of Jesus, a resurrection life for us, be- 
cause He once was dead, will become a daily 
and signal experience. His own words will 
then find a new meaning to us, “He that 
loseth his life for My eake shall find it” 
(Matt. xvi. 25). Ah, it will not be an old 
life restored, but a new life, even His very 
own. Thus surrendering our weakness to 
Him, we have in return His strength. Lo« 
ing our wills in His we find His will in us ig 
the same as that which was bestowed upon 
the Beloved Son in the flesh. Being made 
conformable to His death, we are made re- 
cipients of the power of His resurrection. 
Always bearing about in the body the dying 
of the Lord Jesus, the life also of Jesus is 
made manifest in our mortal flesh. 

And akin to this glorious resurrection life 
imparted through dying with Jesus, is the 
praise life which flows from it. We observe 
that each instance, where the apostle men- 
tions the experience of dying thus, that the 
life of Jesus may be conferred, he associates 
with an ascription of praise. In II. Corinth- 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 153 


ians, ii. it is “Thanks be to God, which al- 
ways causeth us to triumph in Christ.” In 
chapter four, he beholds in ecstacy, the 
“eternal weight of glory.” In chapter twelve, 
he will “glory in infirmities,” that the power 
of Christ may rest upon him. In Philip- 
pians four, he brings the teaching to a focus 
in the exclamation, “Rejoice in the Lord 
alway.” And the Epistle to the Galatians 
cannot end, though partaking so strongly of 
reproach, without the confident boast, “God 
forbid that I should glory, save in the cross 
of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The element of 
praise in the life of the believer which is dis- 
tinguishing, is that it is not dependent upon 
circumstances or environment. Much of 
praise in the life of the ordinary Christian 
is based upon what has been received. But 
the fuller expression of the praise life is 
found in praising ere the blessing has come. 
It breathes out its notes of victory, not that 
God has done, but that He may do. It does 
not thereby expect to move God, but by its 
very jubilation it attunes itself to the har- 
mony of God’s own plan. So we may not sup- 


154 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 

pose that the prisoners in the jail in Philippi 
were praying and singing hymns at mid- 
night, in order that they might persuade 
God to do just what we know He did do; but 
they thus deported themselves because their 
very consciousness of His presence and 
blessing impelled them to disturb the silence 
of the dark hours with their glad outbursts. 
We wonder if the prison walls would have 
shaken, and the doors opened, if they had 
kept their joy in silence. We are prompted to 
believe that the history would have taken an- 
other turn in that case. They knew not 
what God would do, but they were in accord 
with His purpose, and their midnight as- 
criptions made His work complete. We 
shall never know in this life how many con- 
quests we have missed by failing to praise, 
when the very thought of praise seemed 
most foreign to our experience. It is a hap- 
py day for us when we understand this 
mystery. But only the resurrection life of 
Jesus can make us possessors of it. Against 
all reason and feeling is the Scriptural ideal 
of praise. “He giveth songs in the night” 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 155 


ies 
(Job. xxxv. 10). Well may Elihu thus quali- 
-fy the praise spirit. We cannot raise a note 
of gladness in the night. We think we do 
well if we praise when we are the recipients 
of some special favor. But God giveth songs 
to those who will sing them, at the most un- 
seemly time and upon the most contradic- 
tory occasion. In the judgment of the nat- 
ural man, that was a silly proceeding at Jeri- 
cho, when a whole nation with not so much 
as @ pick, made its daily round of the city, 
and at the end of the week encompassed the 
walls seven times to merely raise a shout of 
triumph. But we know the potency in that 
incongruous system of warfare. Gideon is 
no authority on military tactics, but his 
trumpets sound an alarm to Midian, which 
strikes the paen of victory for God; while 
the multitude, like unto grasshoppers for 
numbers flee before the puny three hundred. 
Weak indeed is the position of Jehoshaphat, 
his country invaded by the Moabites and 
‘Ammonites, peoples skilled in war, when he 
obeyed the command of the prophet Jaha- 
giel to stand still and see the salvation of 


156 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


the Lord, against this great company, 
through the singing of psalms. But we note 
that when the Levites began to sing, “Praise 
the Lord,” the battle was won. 

Perhaps our greatest weakness in this 
matter has been that in the hours of our 
deepest testing, we have felt that prayer, 
hard, persistent and importunate prayer was 
the only recourse. And the while, our gracious 
Father has been waiting for the song of 
triumph. It has not been his fault if we 
either missed the victory or obtained but a 
poor conquest. If 


“Satan trembles, when he sees 
The weakest saint upon his knees,” 


then, 


The weakest saint may Satan rout, 
Who meets him with a praiseful shout. 


David says (Ps. lvi. 3), “What time I am 
afraid, I will trust in Thee.” That is good 
doctrine and accords with the prayerful vein 
in whieh his psalm is written. But Isaiah 
strikes a higher note, when in his praise 
ehapter (xii.) he exclaims, “I will trust and 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BOPY. 137 


not be afraid.” Songs of joy will keep the 
fear away. A possible reading of Psalm 1. 
23 is “Whoso offereth the sacrifice of 
thanksgiving, glorifieth me; and prepareth a 
way that I may show him the salvation of 
God.” 

We are convinced that many dear children 
of God fall short of their longings for di- 
vine life for their bodies for want of this 
victorious art of praising, in order that they 
may get into touch with God. Not a few of 
those who have walked closely with Him 
could tell us of marvelous experiences of 
strength imparted through just simply prais- 
ing, when there was nothing to praise for, so 
far as the senses were witnesses. Let us 
urge that power for healing is wonderfully 
conveyed through this channel. “The joy 
of the Lord is your strength” (Neh. viii. 10). 
Pray all you will, Beloved, and you cannot 
err in that but standing upon the promise 
(Mark xi. 24) “All things whatsoever ye pray 
and ask for, believe that ye have received 
them, and ye shall have them,” sing out 
from the depths of your jubilant heart, 


158 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


‘Hallelujah! ‘tis done.” And the Promiser 
will see that the prayer of faith energised by 
the song of triumph, shall save the sick. 
Aye, more. The habitual practice of the 
praise life will hold immune from Satan’s 
attack, the dear saints of God, who will to 
sing the songs He gives them in the night. 





Chapter LX, 


THE DIVINE MANIFESTATION 


Healing always present in the Church. Di?- 
ference between instantaenous and progressive 
healings. The Lord’s healing never independ- 
ent of Himself. Life by the moment. 
Thoroughness and oftentimes suddenness of 
Divine healings. The glory life. Spiritual par- 
ticipation in the healing processes. Freedom 
from all bondage. Consciousness of the Divine 
indwelling. The impartation of Divine life to 
the body of the believer_the Spirit’s prepara: 
tion for the translation of the saints, 


HILE we have said that the present 
day movement towards the knowledge 
of the Holy Ghost as a person has led 

to the acceptance of all that He is qualified 
to give, the church has always had her wit- 
nesses to the truth of divine healing. Cle- 
ment, about 100 A. D., advises those who 
have received the gift of healing to pray for 
the sick. Justin Martyr, about 162 A. D. 
sneaks of the casting out of demons. Ter- 


160 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


tullian, between 200 and 300 A. D., testi- 
fies to the healing of many. Origen of the 
game period witnesses to “marvelous power 
through faith.” Mosheim, the historian, 
alluding to the fourth century, declares that 
miracles of healing had not yet ceased. 
Even in the middle ages, so marked by 
superstition and ignorance, the lamp of 
truth did not entirely go out. And the re- 
formation is marked by a revival in some 
degree of the apostolic practice of praying 
for the sick. The Waldenses who lived out 
the purity of New Testament teaching in 
all other lines of practice, were true to this 
doctrine. We all recall Luther’s persistent 
prayer for the recovery of his friend 
Melancthon. The Wesleys and Whitefield 
believed in the healing of the sick through 
prayer and faith. But there has probably 
never been a so wide revival of this doctrine 
as during the past twenty-five years. 

And we are constrained to believe there 
never was, since apostolic times a so clear ne- 
tion of the truth as now. Healing has long 
been regarded as a miracle, and because se 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 161 


considered many have felt it to be beyond a 
general experience, since miracles are excep- 
tional, not the rule in God’s economy. But 
those who are evidently taught of God are 
persuading us that this life of divine mani- 
festation in the body of the believer is a 
normal order. We simply take our stand on 
higher ground than the natural position. 
We believe that our God is life, and as our 
need of life is greater than the supply 
which we have in nature, we may take of His 
life, because He has bidden us to. This may 
embrace at times miraculous intervention; 
it always is supernatural. “There is a day 
coming when in our future and glorified life, 
these bodies shall be able to pass from world 
to world as quickly as thought can pass now; 
and when that day comes, it will simply be 
a higher plane of living and being. But we 
are constantly entering upon the higher 
even here, and anticipating and over-lapping 
it. All that is necessary, therefore, is that 
we rise to the higher life and we shall find 
its laws lifting us above the restraints of the 
lower The real secret of divine healing is 


162 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


to reach out to the divine life and become 
united to the Living One. Then His super- 
natural life will fill not only our spiritual 
but our physical nature, so that we shall find 
that the law of life in Christ Jesus hath 
made us free from the law of sin and death.” 
- Consequently, while this period of history 
has been marked by wonderful cases of in- 
stantaneous healing, such as malignant can- 
cer, consumption, Bright’s disease and kin- 
dred disorders generally considered incur- 
able; and even the growth of new bone and 
the forming of eyes in sockets long vacant, 
still much of the work of God for the bodies 
of His believing ones has been in the less 
marked manifestations of quietly and pro- 
gressively imparted life and healing. And 
this is in accord with the Word. There are 
two terms employed in the New Testament 
the translation of which is the same in the 
English translation, i. e., to heal. One is 
therapeuo; the other is iaomai. The latter 
term is used in connection with healings 
which are immediate and complete, such as 
the healing of the Centurian’s servant, 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY, 163 


where as we know it was at the “self same 
hour.” Also the case of the daughter of the 
Syro-Phenecian woman, who was “healed 
from that hour.” And whereever the per- 
fect tense of therapeuo is used the com- 
pleted healing is implied. The imperfect 
tense, however does not convey a fully ac- 
complished fact, but reveals healing in pro- 
eess. This will afford comfort, we are as- 
sured, to many dear ones, who have felt that 
the absence of immediate manifestation of 
the divine life, may have indicated loss of 
faith or some other obstacle to the accom- 
plishment of the promised work of God. 
Discouragement has often led the way to re- 
nunciation of faith altogether, because of a 
misunderstanding of the manner of His 
manifestation. We are to be sure that His 
work is as much His when done slowly as 
when in an instant the result is reached. 
Let us not obstruct His progress by failing 
to accept what He has done, and is doing as 
proof of the fuller demonstration. While 
we may not say we are perfectly healed if 
there yet remain evidences of the presence 


164 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


of the disease, we may surely and confidently 
affirm that we are kept by Him, from the 
moment we have placed ourselves unreserv- 
edly into His care. This will apply with 
particular force to the almost invariable re- 
turn of symptons, when a case of healing is 
committed to the Lord. Satan will with- 
stand the saint in this transaction, seeking 
to overturn his confidence. But we may be 
certain that the aggravation of former symp- 
toms or the introduction of new ones is but 
proof that God has taken charge, and the 
enemy is roused. Experience has taught us 
all, who have sought to live this life, that 
we have the best evidence of the Lord’s un- 
dertaking for us, when’ our adversary is 
stirred to renewed attacks upon us. 

And this conception of the double mean- 
ing of healing leads us to recognise that it 
is not conferred for the residue of our days, 
independent of our Lord. We should all 
in the beginning of our trust in Him, prefer 
it should be so. How glorious to receive in 
an instant of time all that would insure us 
freedom from weakness or disease for the 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 165 


rest of a long and happy life! “Divine heal- 
ing in its deepest and truest experience is 
a life of ceaseless dependence in the trying 
places on the power beyond yourself, and a 
source of strength that allows you enough 
for only a moment at a time. The popular 
idea is that it is some extraordinary influx 
of miraculous strength and love that lifts us 
above trial and disease for a lifetime, and 
equips us in a moment for all the way. This 
was not the apostle’s experience, “We which 
live,” he said, “are always delivered unto 
death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of 
Jesus might be manifested in our mortal 
flesh.” Constantly his natural flesh is failing 
him. Ceaselessly, the divine life of Christ 
was flowing into him. Grace for grace, and 
moment by moment, he lived on the life of 
his Lord. This was Jeremiah’s promise, 
“Thy life will I give to Thee for a prey in 
all places whither I have sent Thee.” It was 
like something constantly wrung from the 
jaws of destruction. What a thrilling figure! 
“a life for a prey.” That is the sort of life 
that God has given to many of us. Not a life 


166 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


assured by self-constituted strength, but a 
life that hangs upon our Lord’s life every 
breath, and yet, that never fails because He 
ever lives; it’s watchword His own glorious 
experience, “As the living Father hath sent 
Me, and I live by the Father, even so he that 
eateth Me, even he shall live by Me.” Can 
we not see the wisdom of this order? How 
selfish would we become, how independent 
of Him, could we like the worldling, who 
squanders his physical strength in folly, live 
apart from the Life-giver! Here indeed, 
is the mystery of the prayer life of which we 
have already spoken. Prayer is not a com- 
mercial transaction by which we are made 
the recipients of coveted gifts. Its higher 
law of operation is, that unceasing need may 
effect in us unceasing dependence. “He 
loves to be longed for, He loves to be 
sought.” And so as the manna was given 
for the day, we live thus upon Him for the 
present, knowing that the future is safely 
hidden in the hollow of His hand. 

It may be also, that the waiting time, 
while we are learning to take His life, in- 


DIVINE LIVE YOR THE BOPY. 167 


stead of an allotment of life independent of 
Himself, is meant to awaken implicit obedi- 
ence to His command. Mamy have received 
healing without anointing. Others have 
been kept back until they were willing to 
comply with the Word. Therefore, while 
we are not to be disheartened over apparent 
failure, but count the work as being done, 
we ought to be ready ever to ask what there 
may be yet for us to do that will bring us 
more clearly into light, more into harmony 
with His purpose for us. 

There is one blessed feature of this life 
manifestation, which brings joy and grati- 
tude to the believer. While the processes 
of recovery by the use of remedies is always 
slow and tedious, when the divine life does 
meet us the work is rapid. Not only be- 
cause systems of treatment involve compli- 
cations which are indicated by relieving one 
_ malady and setting up another, but the 
waitmg time is invariably the means of 
getting the saint into touch with his Lord. 
When once that union is effected, nothing 
‘ remains to prevent the unobstructed inflow 


168 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


of divine energy. While He may suffer « 
return of the ailment, because of some fresh 
lesson not easily acquired by any other 
means, be sure that when the Refiner sees in 
the crucible His own face, the work is done. 
So that we may well exclaim in the apostle’s 
words, through the very flesh testings, “In 
all these things we are more than conquerors 
through Him that loved us.” Let us be cau- 
tioned also, lest we bring ourselves into 
bondage by depending upon past experiences 
of His power. If we think to subsist upon 
the manna of yesterday, instead of the 
“Bread of Life” especially intended for to- 
day, we shall be ensnared. “His mercies are 
new every morning.” “He hath put a new 
song into my mouth” cries David. We may 
not claim conquest today because of yester- 
day’s triumphs. This day is a creation all 
of itself. It stands different from any day 
that has ever entered into our lives. Only 
He is sufficient for it. 

A very precious phase of the divine mani- 
festation is that the glory life of the believer 
becomes more real when the body is made 


DIVINE LI7T£ FOR THE BODY. 169 


the recipient of he life of Jesus. As His 
human body was illumined with the super- 
nal light, which it had up to the time of 
the Transfiguration obscured, so the light 
that is in ue must shine out with fuller rad- 
iance, whew the entire temple is given to 
the Spirit. We are constrained to believe 
that the body of the Lord Jesus was always 
resplondent with the inner shekinah to the 
sight of God and angels. The Transfigura- 
tion was simply a bursting through the in- 
terstices of the flesh, for the sake of those 
who were for the time given this wonderful 
display of incarnated Deity. There is so 
much said about our being “the children of 
light,” so much taught as to our life in the 
light, that we may not unreasonably fore- 
see in our present standing before God, we 
are already partakers of the glory that shall 
be revealed. The world does not know it, 
but our Lord does and sees the glory in us. 
If we are to be “transfigured” by the renew- 
ing of our minds (lit. trans. of Rom. xii. 2); 
‘f also beholding as in glass the glory of the 
Lord, we are “transfigured” into the same 


r7o DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


image (II. Cor. iti. 18), may not that trans- 
figuring (which is the same word as is used 
in Matt. xvii. 2), have relation to our flesh 
as well, since Romans xii. 1 exhorts us to 
present our bodies a living sacrifice? And 
following II. Cor. iii. 18 is the wonderful 
chapter on the manifestation of the life of 
Jesus in our mortal flesh. We offer the 
thought with reverence. If it shall be found 
true of us, what a superior excellence must 
attach to the body of the saint in whom the 
divine life has unlimited sovereignty. And 
if true what an exalted motive for being 
pure as He is pure! 

Apart from the physical aspects of the in- 
dweling of the divine life, we know that 
trusting the Lord for our bodies brings 
added spiritual blessings. There is an- 
abundant display of our Lord’s kindness to 
Israel in Isa. lxi. 7, and Joel ii. 25. “For 
your shame ye shall have double; in their 
land they shall possess double. I will restore 
unto you the years that the locust hath 
eaten.” And so to us He gives not only all 
needed physical strength after our own 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 171 


strength has forsaken us, but our spiritual 
life is also renewed, so that we enter into 
larger experiences of truth on all lines 
through our committal to Him. For the 
Word is illumined now with light we could 
not before apprehend. Many things which 
we passed over with unenlightened minds 
are now full of meaning. The lessons in 
holiness and fellowship which we were slow 
to learn, now are eagerly received. The vis- 
ion of truth we held so lightly once is now 
a clear and satisfying conviction. The 
promises and prophecies have a deeper sig- 
nificance, because the Word is essentially our 
daily food. As we have to live upon it for 
physical supply, since it is His appointed 
channel for the impartation of His life, so 
it permeates every atom of our being. As 
we seek the strength of the Lord for daily 
service in His name, we become possessed 
of His mind and wisdom. We are now 
familiarised with the oft repeated, “All 
things are yours.” Because in the times 
past when we were not all the Lord’s we 
were not able to comprehend our heritage. 


172 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


But now since we have unreservedly 
presented ourselves to Him He has opened 
to our vision the all things of His providing. 
So long as we held anything back, there was 
a limit to the supply. Now every want of 
our being is met because we have surrend- 
ered to Him the members in which want is 
felt. 

And this abandonment to the divine care, 
this giving to Him of our bodies to be His 
own dwelling brings to us glorious freedom 
from doubt, questioning and anxiety. If 
consequences were dependent upon our 
judgment, our wisdom, our strength, we 
might well stand in perplexity. But He 
has taken control. If He opens some new 
provision, we do not wonder if He is able 
to supply it, we simply believe. If circum- 
stances baffle the shrewdness of the worldly 
wise about us, or disturb the unspiritual 
Christians who carry their own cares, we 
stand still, just eager to see what He will 
do. Nothing is hard with Hin« If He dis- 
plays some wonderful measure of power in 
the life of a trusting one, we ao not burden 


DIVINE LIVE FOR THE BODY. 1748 


eur minds with attempting to analyse how 
He could have done it. It is enough for us 
that He did it. We leave to others all the 
painful processes of logic which try to find 
conclusions from set premises. Nothing dis- 
turbs our equilibrium, because we are cen- 
tered in Him. We do not ask why? in every 
unsettled turn of life. He knows and that 
is sufficient for us. We have “great peace” 
because we love His law. We have “perfect 
peace” because our minds are stayed on 
Him. We have the “peace that passeth all 
understanding” for we are anxious for noth- 
ing, but in everything, by prayer and sup- 
plication, with thanksgiving, we do make 
our requests known unto God, as He has 
commanded. 

Consciousness of the presence and indwel- 
ing of the Lord grows more and more clear. 
We become sensitive to the least deviation 
from the rule of life He has planned for us. 
Not like the children of Israel, who must 
needs have plagues inflicted upon them to 
bring them toa sense of His authority, we 
simply take Himself with ack freedom and 


174 DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 


fulness that He may speak to our hearts and 
we respond to His will. In the smallest de- 
tails, it is blessed to discover how He conde- 
scends to guide and help, in answer to our 
claim. And equally, in the most minute 
concerns of our life, we transfer to Him all 
government. We are responsive too, to such 
revelations and quickenings as He may im- 
part to us that will lead us to fuller union 
with Himself, and to larger possibilities in 
divine things. Thus possessed by Him and 
possessing Him, we recognise that He “has 
not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, 
and love, and of a sound mind.” Truly, 
“they that err in spirit shall come to under- 
standing.” (II. Tim. i. 7%; Isa. xxix. 24). 
And this wide experience of His favor does, 
we believe, flow out of the complete sur- 
render of our entire being to Him. 

In conclusion we note that the manifesta- 
tion of the divine life for the body, in the 
flesh of the believer is the very preparation 
He designs for the coming of the Lord 
Jesus. The mortal body that is quickened 

pw by the Spirit of Him that raised Jesus 


”“ 


DIVINE LIFE FOR THE BODY. 175 


from the dead (Rom. viii. 11) is cer 
tainly nearer the quality o* translation, by 
this very indweling of divine life for physi- 
cal needs. Indeed, it is the highest in- 
eentive to the acceptance and practice of 
the doctrine; as well the evidence that the 
Holy Spirit is preparing the body of Christ 
for His appearing; that we should let Him 
possess, illumine and energise these mortal 
bodies in which we tabernacle; that the 
experience of His life giving, may fit us the 
more gloriously for the “fashioning anew,” 
“conformed to the body of His glory,” when 
He descends from heaven. 





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